ow
sweet voice some plaintive simple air that he loved to hear, till the
tears would steal down his grief-worn cheeks, and, laying his hand upon
her fair young brow, he would bless her, and say that the God who was
about to take his noble son from him, had sent an angel to be a daughter
to him in his stead. And so the weary days wore on--still vibrating
between life and death, the strong man, his matchless powers now reduced
to the weakness of infancy, lay stretched upon the couch of suffering,
whence it appeared too probable he might never be removed, save to the
last sad resting-place of frail humanity--the grave.

~224~~About the eighth day the ligature with which Ellis had tied
the artery came away, and the wound assumed a rather more favourable
appearance, but the fever remained unsubdued, and the delirium
continued. Each day which passed without improvement added to the length
of Dr. Probehurt's solemn visage, and I could see that in his own mind
he had little or no hope of the patient's recovery. Ellis was by far
the most sanguine of the party, and, whenever we urged our gloomy
forebodings upon him, invariably replied--"Yes, I know all that--it
would have killed' any other man, but it won't kill him. Wait a bit, and
you'll see."

A fortnight had now elapsed, and the continued burden of his grief began
to tell visibly upon Sir John. The ruddy hue of health faded from his
cheeks; his eyes grew dim with weeping, his hands shook, and his firm
manly step became feeble and uncertain; it seemed as if in that short
space of time he had grown ten years older. My mother also began to look
ill and harassed, and Fanny, though she still kept up wonderfully, and
was the life and soul of us all, waxed paler and thinner every day,
while, for my own part, I could neither eat, drink, nor sleep to any
efficient purpose, and divided my time between watching in the sick-room
and pacing up and down the garden, beyond the precincts of which I
never ventured, from a nervous dread lest anything might go wrong in my
absence.

On one occasion Ellis, completely wearied out, had thrown himself on
a sofa to snatch an hour's repose, while I took his place by Harry's
bedside. It was between two and three o clock in the morning, and the
first rays of early dawn, stealing in through the partially closed
shutters, and mingling with the faint glimmer of the night-lamp, threw a
pale and ghastly light over the surrounding objects, when I fancied t