the latch, and sometimes to thrust his ugly skull into the chamber, nodding to Rose and pointing at her husband, but still delayed to enter.  “This bedridden wretch cannot escape me,” quoth Death.  “I will go forth and run a race with the swift and fight a battle with the strong, and come back for Toothaker at my leisure.”  Oh, when the deliverer came so near, in the dull anguish of her worn-out sympathies did she never long to cry, “Death, come in”?

But no; we have no right to ascribe such a wish to our friend Rose.  She never failed in a wife’s duty to her poor sick husband.  She murmured not though a glimpse of the sunny sky was as strange to her as him, nor answered peevishly though his complaining accents roused her from sweetest dream only to share his wretchedness.  He knew her faith, yet nourished a cankered jealousy; and when the slow disease had chilled all his heart save one lukewarm spot which Death’s frozen fingers were searching for, his last words were, “What would my Rose have done for her first love, if she has been so true and kind to a sick old man like me?” And then his poor soul crept away and left the body lifeless, though hardly more so than for years before, and Rose a widow, though in truth it was the wedding-night that widowed her.  She felt glad, it must be owned, when Mr. Toothaker was buried, because his corpse had retained such a likeness to the man half alive that she hearkened for the sad murmur of his voice bidding her shift his pillow.  But all through the next winter, though the grave had held him many a month, she fancied him calling from that cold bed, “Rose, Rose!  Come put a blanket on my feet!”

So now the Rosebud was the widow Toothaker.  Her troubles had come early, and, tedious as they seemed, had passed before all her bloom was fled.  She was still fair enough to captivate a bachelor, or with a widow’s cheerful gravity she might have won a widower, stealing into his heart in the very guise of his dead wife.  But the widow Toothaker had no such projects.  By her watchings and continual cares her heart had become knit to her first husband with a constancy which changed its very nature and made her love him for his infirmities, and infirmity for his sake.  When the palsied old man was gone, even her early lover could not have supplied his place.  She had dwelt in a sick-chamber and been the companion of a half-dead wretch till she could scarcely breathe in a free air and felt ill at ease with the healthy and the happy.  She missed the fragrance of the doctor’s stuff.  She walked the chamber with a noiseless footfall.  If visitors came in, she spoke in soft and soothing accents, and was startled and shocked by their loud voices.  Often in the lonesome evening she looked timorously from the fireside to the bed, with almost a hope of recognizing a ghastly face upon the pillow.  Then went her thoughts sadly to her husband’s grave.  If one impatient throb had wronged him in his lifetime, if she had