and sit up in bed if you like, but you mustn’t stay here any longer,” and he gathered her in his arms and quickly carried her to the next room.  She made no resistance, and took the medicine which Mrs. Martin brought, without a word.  There was a blazing fire now in the bedroom fire-place, and, as she lay still, her face took on a satisfied, rested look.  Her mother sat beside her, tearful, and yet contented and glad to have her near, and the others whispered together in the kitchen.  It might have been the last night of a long illness instead of the sudden, startling entrance of sorrow in human shape.  “No,” said the doctor, “she cannot last much longer with such a cough as that, Mrs. Dyer.  She has almost reached the end of it.  I only hope that she will go quickly.”

And sure enough; whether the fatal illness had run its natural course, or whether the excitement and the forced strength of the evening before had exhausted the small portion of strength that was left, when the late dawn lighted again those who watched, it found them sleeping, and one was never to wake again in the world she had found so disappointing to her ambitions, and so untrue to its fancied promises.

The doctor had promised to return early, but it was hardly daylight before there was another visitor in advance of him.  Old Mrs. Meeker, a neighbor whom nobody liked, but whose favor everybody for some reason or other was anxious to keep, came knocking at the door, and was let in somewhat reluctantly by Mrs. Jake, who was just preparing to go home in order to send one or both the brothers to the village and to acquaint John Thacher with the sad news of his sister’s death.  He was older than Adeline, and a silent man, already growing to be elderly in his appearance.  The women had told themselves and each other that he would take this sorrow very hard, and Mrs. Thacher had said sorrowfully that she must hide her daughter’s poor worn clothes, since it would break John’s heart to know she had come home so beggarly.  The shock of so much trouble was stunning the mother; she did not understand yet, she kept telling the kind friends who sorrowed with her, as she busied herself with the preparations for the funeral.  “It don’t seem as if ’twas Addy,” she said over and over again, “but I feel safe about her now, to what I did,” and Mrs. Jake and Mrs. Martin, good helpful souls and brimful of compassion, went to and fro with their usual diligence almost as if this were nothing out of the common course of events.

Mrs. Meeker had heard the wagon go by and had caught the sound of the doctor’s voice, her house being close by the road, and she had also watched the unusual lights.  It was annoying to the Dyers to have to answer questions, and to be called upon to grieve outwardly just then, and it seemed disloyal to the dead woman in the next room to enter upon any discussion of her affairs.  But presently the little child, whom nobody had thought of except to see that she still