s--the infant she held to her breast, and which she would
have liked to bury in her heart away from all danger, concealed
from the malevolent eye, and the murderous hand.

All the mother's nature in her was roused and flared into madness.
She alone loved this little creature, she alone stood between it
and destruction. She would fight for it, defend it to her last
breath, with every weapon wherewith she was endowed by nature.

After the first paroxysm of passion was passed, and a lull of
exhaustion ensued, she looked up, and saw Bideabout enter, and
as he entered he cast a furtive glance at the table, then at the
child.

In a moment she resolved on the course she should adopt.

"Have you given the babe the draught?" he asked, with averted face.

"Not all."

"Of course, not all."

"Will it make baby sleep?" asked Mehetabel.

"O, sleep--sleep! yes--we shall have rest for one night--for many,
I trust. O, do not doubt. It will make it sleep!"

CHAPTER XXXVII.

A MENACED LIFE.

As soon as the Broom-Squire had gone out again to the "hog-pen," as a
pigstye is called in Surrey, to give the pig its "randams and
crammins," because Mehetabel was unable to do this because unable
to leave the child, then she knelt by the hearth, put aside the
turves, and, regardless of the fire, groped for the fragments of
the broken phial, that nothing might betray to Bideabout her
having rejected the medicine with which he had tampered.

She cut and burnt her fingers, but in the excitement of her
feelings, was insensible to pain.

She had removed and secreted the glass before he returned. The babe
was sleeping heavily, and snoring.

When Jonas came in and heard the sound from the cradle, a look of
expectation came over his face.

"The child's burrin' like a puckeridge (night-jar)," he said.
"Shouldn't wonder if the medicine ain't done him a lot o' good. It
don't need a doctor to come and see to prescribe for a baby. All
that little ones want is good sleep, and natur' does the rest."

Owing to the annoyance caused to Bideabout by the child's
fretfulness during the night, Mehetabel occupied a separate
chamber, the spare bedroom, along with her babe, and spent her
broken nights under the great blue and white striped tent that
covered the bed.

She had enjoyed but little sleep for several nights, and her days
had been occupied by the necessary attention to the suffering child
and the cares of the household. Because the