“Do you mean,” Elizabeth Burton put the question with trembling lips and chalk-white cheeks, “that perhaps—­even if he gets physically well—­” She, too, broke off.

“Frankness is best,” responded the family physician, who feeling the most personal responsibility, assumed the hard role of spokesman.  “Sometimes in cases of this sort the brain is left—­with a permanent scar upon its efficiency.”

The mother groaned.  At her own house lay a daughter in that collapse which had followed the overtaxed courage of the first shock.  Here lay Hamilton, her oldest; her Napoleonic boy for whose condign punishment a nation’s voice cried out.  To her they were simply her children, equally dear.

Only one child was left her in his proper condition of mind and body.  He, because of his sensitive, almost clairvoyant nature, had always been very close to her.  Now she turned to Paul, and Paul, although his heart was shaken with terror and distress, rose for the time beyond his weakness and was almost a man as he sought to brace his mother’s need.

From her first interview with the doctors she went to the music-room and, pausing on the threshold, heard him at the piano.  He was singing very low.

    “If I were hanged to the highest tree—­Mother o’ mine, Mother o’ mine,
    I know whose prayers would come up to me—­Mother o’ mine.”

She went in and Paul took her in his arms and helped her to a chair.  Then as he had used to do when a little boy he knelt down, gazing into her face while she talked, and she reached out a hand which was much thinner since her own late illness and ran it through the dark hair over his white forehead.  For a merciful little moment it seemed to this grief-stricken woman that she was no longer white-haired and beautifully gowned.  In her fancy the fingers with their wealth of rings were again red with the drudgery of the washtub and the head she caressed was the head of a little boy, who, because he was delicate and shrinking, found a greater delight here at her knee than in the rougher companionship of playmates.  Paul spoke softly.

“Ham”—­it had been a long time since he had used that abbreviated name.  Perhaps he, too, had slipped back into the past—­“Ham will get well—­and work more miracles, mother.  He won’t surrender even to death.  His spirit, and his star, will bring him through.”

“I almost wish,” her words were faint, “he had never had a star.  I wish that we were all back there, close to the strength of the hills and the graves of our dead.”

In these days Paul was very constantly with his mother, and by a thousand little attentions made himself indispensable to her.