Lenora fiercely grasped her mother’s arm, and said, “How could you refuse him water, and sleep while he got it himself?”

But Mrs. Hamilton needed not that her daughter should accuse her.  Willie had been her favorite, and the tears which she dropped upon his pillow were genuine.  The physician who was called pronounced his disease to be scarlet fever, saying that its violence was greatly increased by a severe cold which he had taken.

“You have killed him, mother; you have killed him!” said Lenora.

Twenty-four hours had passed since, with straining ear, Carrie had listened for the morning train, and again down the valley floated the smoke of the engine, and over the blue hills echoed the loud scream of the locomotive; but no sound could awaken the fair young sleeper, though Willie started, and throwing up his hands, one of which, the right one, was firmly clinched, murmured, “Maggie, Maggie.”

Ten minutes more and Margaret was there, weeping in agony over the inanimate form of her sister, and almost shrieking as she saw Willie’s wild eye, and heard his incoherent words.  Terrible to Mr. Hamilton was this coming home.  Like one who walks in sleep, he went from room to room, kissing the burning brow of one child, and then, while the hot breath was yet warm upon his lips, pressing them to the cold face of the other.

All day Margaret sat by her dying brother, praying that he might be spared until Walter came.  Her prayer was answered; for at nightfall Walter was with them.  Half an hour after his return Willie died; but ere his right hand dropped lifeless by his side he held it up to view, saying: 

“Father—­give it to nobody but father.”

After a moment Margaret, taking within hers the fast-stiffening hand, gently unclosed the fingers, and found the crumpled piece of paper on which Carrie had written to her father.

CHAPTER XI.

MARGARET AND HER FATHER.

’Twas midnight—­midnight after the burial.  In the library of the old homestead sat its owner, his arms resting upon the table, and his face reclining upon his arms.  Sadly was he reviewing the dreary past, since first among them death had been, bearing away his wife, the wife of his first only love.  Now, by her grave there was another, on which the pale moonbeams and the chill night-dews were falling, but they could not disturb the rest of the two who, side by side in the same coffin, lay sleeping, and for whom the father’s tears were falling fast, and the father’s heart was bleeding.

“Desolate, desolate—­all is desolate,” said the stricken man.  “Would that I, too, were asleep with my lost ones!”

There was a rustling sound near him, a footfall, and an arm was thrown lovingly around his neck.  Margaret’s tears were on his cheek, and Margaret’s voice whispered in his ear, “Dear father, we must love each other better now.”