tion and trust had gone.

He did not know her now, and her mother sent her home with the promise
that she should come often, if he got better and would like to see her;
but she remained day after day nursing him as his own mother would have
done, until the mind was clear again, and he was conscious of her
grateful presence. All through the long period of his delirium he had
fancied that his mother's spirit was beside him ministering to his
wants, and whenever she went from his sight, for a moment, he kept up a
lamentable moaning until she was there again, and then he would lay for
hours without even a murmur or a sound.

No wonder she felt a mysterious interest in the boy as he grew stronger,
and would so often bend her steps to his humble dwelling to read or talk
to him. And Kittie, too, desired no better reward for good behavior than
to spend an hour at poor Archibald Mackie's. They had learned all about
his history now, and he had told Mrs. Lincoln how much she had reminded
him of the dead mother, and what a help her sympathy had been to him in
his studies, and they had spoken of Willie and his troubles, and Archie
forgot the sour face that had sent him away from the carriage, and
thought only of the boy's crippled fate, so like his own. Like, and yet
unlike--to the casual observer there was a vast difference between the
forlorn, poverty-stricken, ragged Archie, and the petted, and pampered,
and richly-clad Willie; but to the eye of the unwearied watcher who had
witnessed the patience and the goodness of the sick lad, and contrasted
it with the petulance and sinfulness of her nephew, the gifts of God
were not unequally distributed.

CHAPTER VI.

It was astonishing how many friends Archie had among the poor--there was
Mahan Doughty coming every day with her apron full of wild flowers which
she had wandered a long way to find, and which she carefully disposed in
the little pewter mug that stood on the table beside the lad's bed--and
there was old Patrick Marsh, night and morning, with a fresh cup of milk
from his one precious goat--and Sally Bunt with the only egg her
hen-house could produce, and a host of young voices often at the door
with a hushed tone of inquiry concerning the invalid. Oh! it isn't
wealth that brings the greatest and purest joy! Mrs. Fay felt that as
she saw the blessings of an unbought interest pouring in upon the humble
inmate of the small hovel, and she adored more than ever the justi