understand the demand;
but when they pine for they know not what--sympathy, sentiment, some of
these indefinite abstractions--I can't do it; I don't know it; I haven't
got it.--Madam, accept my arm."

Mrs. Pryor signified that she should stay with her daughter that
evening. Helstone, accordingly, left them together. He soon returned,
bringing a plate in his own consecrated hand.

"This is chicken," he said, "but we'll have partridge to-morrow.--Lift
her up, and put a shawl over her. On my word, I understand
nursing.--Now, here is the very same little silver fork you used when
you first came to the rectory. That strikes me as being what you may
call a happy thought--a delicate attention. Take it, Cary, and munch
away cleverly."

Caroline did her best. Her uncle frowned to see that her powers were so
limited. He prophesied, however, great things for the future; and as she
praised the morsel he had brought, and smiled gratefully in his face, he
stooped over her pillow, kissed her, and said, with a broken, rugged
accent, "Good-night, bairnie! God bless thee!"

Caroline enjoyed such peaceful rest that night, circled by her mother's
arms, and pillowed on her breast, that she forgot to wish for any other
stay; and though more than one feverish dream came to her in slumber,
yet, when she woke up panting, so happy and contented a feeling returned
with returning consciousness that her agitation was soothed almost as
soon as felt.

As to the mother, she spent the night like Jacob at Peniel. Till break
of day she wrestled with God in earnest prayer.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE WEST WIND BLOWS.

Not always do those who dare such divine conflict prevail. Night after
night the sweat of agony may burst dark on the forehead; the supplicant
may cry for mercy with that soundless voice the soul utters when its
appeal is to the Invisible. "Spare my beloved," it may implore. "Heal my
life's life. Rend not from me what long affection entwines with my whole
nature. God of heaven, bend, hear, be clement!" And after this cry and
strife the sun may rise and see him worsted. That opening morn, which
used to salute him with the whisper of zephyrs, the carol of skylarks,
may breathe, as its first accents, from the dear lips which colour and
heat have quitted, "Oh! I have had a suffering night. This morning I am
worse. I have tried to rise. I cannot. Dreams I am unused to have
troubled me."

Then the watcher approaches the patient's pillo