As Russie continued to hold his own against his terrible disease, Mr. Marshall thought that the operation of resecting the leg at the hip might save his life, and though such a maimed existence as his would then be was but a doubtful boon, the boy eagerly caught at the chance of life; and, to recruit strength for the operation, I decided to take him, by Marshall’s advice, to America, and give him a summer in the woods, camping out.  I took him to the Maine woods instead of my old haunts of the Adirondacks, because the rail served to the verge of the wilderness, and we had, on Moosehead Lake, the resource of a good hotel to take refuge in if matters went ill.  They did go ill, and I found that life was too low in him to give the woodland air and the influence of the pine-trees power to help him.  Hope left me, and we turned homeward again, sailing from Boston direct to London.  It was in late December, and we had a terrific voyage, and one of the hairbreadth escapes of which I have had so many.  In the height of the gale Russie and I were standing in the companion-way, watching the storm, for the boy loved the sea dearly and enjoyed the heaviest weather, when the captain called to me to say that we were not safe there and had better go below.  Only a few minutes later an exceptionally heavy sea broke over the deck, took five boats out of the davits or crushed them, carried away in splinters the companion-way in which we had been standing, and swept the decks, the chief officer being saved only by being lashed to the railing of the bridge, and the fall of the mass of water on the deck breaking several of the deck beams.  We had to lie to for the rest of the gale.  We landed at Gravesend just before Christmas, Russie being in much worse condition than when we left England.  Up to that time I had clung to hope, for to lose the boy was like tearing my soul in two.  Mr. Marshall no longer held out a hope, but said if he had known the strength of the boy’s constitution he would have operated when he first saw him, which was what Russie then begged for and had always looked forward to.  Through five years he had resisted the pain of that most painful disease, hoping always, always reading, almost always cheerful.

Our lease expiring, I decided to leave London, and Mr. Spartali offered us a cottage on one of his estates in the Isle of Wight, where the children, Russie especially, might have sweet English air.  Marie being engaged in finishing her pictures for the spring exhibition, I went down alone with the children, stopping at an inn at Sandown till the furniture was in the cottage.  While so waiting Russie was taken with the first convulsion peculiar to his malady, and then I realized that Death had come, and, unwilling to face him in the semi-publicity of an inn, I took the boy in my arms to the railway, and from the station nearest to the cottage bore him thither.