ay exaggerated rumors of the
havoc made by cholera in the sultry climate of Louisiana reached Fanny,
fearful misgivings filled her mind lest Dr. Lacey, too, should fall a
victim to the plague.

For herself she had no fears, though slowly but surely through her veins
the fever flame was creeping, scorching her blood, poisoning her breath
and burning her cheek, until her father, alarmed at her altered and
languid appearance, inquired for the cause of the change. "Nothing but a
slight headache," was the reply.

Next to the cholera, Mr. Middleton most feared the typhoid fever, several
cases of which had recently occurred in the neighborhood, and fearing lest
the disease might be stealing upon his darling, he proposed calling the
physician. But this Fanny would not suffer, and persisted in saying that
she was well, until at last she lay all day upon the sofa, and Aunt Katy,
when her favorite herb teas failed of effecting their wonted cure, shook
her head, saying, "I knew 'twould be so. I always telled you we couldn't
keep her long."

Dr. Gordon was finally called and pronounced her disease to be typhoid in
its worst form. Days went by, and so rapid was the progress of the fever
that Mr. Middleton trembled lest of him it had been decreed: "He shall be
childless." To Fanny the thought of death was familiar. For her it had no
terrors, and as her outward strength decayed, her faith in the Eternal
grew stronger and brighter, yet she could not die without an assurance
that again in the better world she would meet the father she so much
loved. For her mother she had no fears, for during many years she had been
a patient, self-denying Christian.

At first Mr. Middleton listened in silence to Fanny's gentle words of
entreaty, but when she spoke to him of her own death, and the love which
alone could sustain him then, he clasped her tightly to his heart, as if
his arm alone could keep her there forever, saying, "Oh, no, you must not
tell me that; you will not die. Even now you are better." And the anxious
father did try to deceive himself into the belief that Fanny was better,
but when each morning's light revealed some fresh ravage the disease had
made--when the flush on her cheek grew deeper and the light of her eye
wilder and more startling, an agonized fear held the old man's heart in
thrall. Many and many a weary night found him sleepless, as he wet his
pillow with tears. Not such tears as he wept when Richard Wilmot died, nor