t some inarticulate sound scarcely human;
his right arm shook and quivered with his vain efforts to raise it;
still it hung nerveless by his side. Consciousness and will yet lingered
in his brain, but physical life and speech had gone for ever. He
fell down struck by that living death--that worse than death, of old
age--paralysis.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The whole household was in terror and disorder. Eulalie had rushed
screaming from the room--Mary went about, trembling like a leaf, trying
to get restoratives--Agatha knelt on the floor, supporting the old
man's head in her lap, speaking to him sometimes, as by the motion
and apparent intelligence of his eyes she fancied he might possibly
understand her.

"Oh, he is dead, he is dead!" cried Mary, as she took up the senseless
hand, and let it fall again with a burst of tears.

"No, he is not dead--he hears you;--take care," said Agatha, putting
the frightened daughter aside with a firmness which rose in her, as in
similar characters it does rise, equal to the necessity. She looked on
the trembling Mary--on the servants gathering round with silent horror,
and saw there were none who, so to speak, "had their wits about them,"
except herself. Scarcely knowing how she did it, she instinctively
assumed the rule. She, the young girl of nineteen, who had never till
then been placed in any position of trial.

"Send all these people away. Quick Mary! Bring some one who can carry
him to his room. And--stay, Eulalie, sit down there and be quiet. Don't
let any one go and alarm Elizabeth."

She gave these orders and everybody listened and obeyed; people are so
ready to obey any guiding spirit at such a crisis. Then she bent down
again over the poor corpselike figure that rested against her knee,
kissed the old man's forehead, and tried to comfort him. She had heard
of cases, when though deprived of speech and motion, the sufferer was
still conscious of all passing around him. Therefore she wished as soon
as possible to remove her father-in-law out of the way of the terrified
household.

He was carried to his room through the hall where he had lately trod
so stately,--the poor old man now helpless as the dead. Leaving the
dining-room, Agatha thought she saw his eyes turn back, as if he knew
that he was crossing the doorway he would never cross more, and
wanted to take a last look at the familiar things. Otherwise he seemed
continually watching herself. She walked beside him ti