You cannot see Charlie, Nelly says;—­and you cannot in the quiet parlor tell Nelly a single one of the many things, which you had hoped to tell her.  She says,—­“Charlie has grown so thin and so pale, you would never know him.”  You listen to her, but you cannot talk:  she asks you what you have seen, and you begin, for a moment joyously; but when they open the door of the sick-room, and you hear a faint sigh, you cannot go on.  You sit still, with your hand in Nelly’s, and look thoughtfully into the blaze.

You drop to sleep after that day’s fatigue, with singular and perplexed fancies haunting you; and when you wake up with a shudder in the middle of the night, you have a fancy that Charlie is really dead:  you dream of seeing him pale and thin, as Nelly described him, and with the starched grave-clothes on him.  You toss over in your bed, and grow hot and feverish.  You cannot sleep; and you get up stealthily, and creep down-stairs.  A light is burning in the hall:  the bedroom-door stands half open, and you listen—­fancying you hear a whisper.  You steal on through the hall, and edge around the side of the door.  A little lamp is flickering on the hearth, and the gaunt shadow of the bedstead lies dark upon the ceiling.  Your mother is in her chair with her head upon her hand—­though it is long after midnight.  The Doctor is standing with his back toward you, and with Charlie’s little wrist in his fingers; and you hear hard breathing, and now and then a low sigh from your mother’s chair.

An occasional gleam of firelight makes the gaunt shadows stagger on the wall, like something spectral.  You look wildly at them, and at the bed where your own brother—­your laughing, gay-hearted brother—­is lying.  You long to see him, and sidle up softly a step or two; but your mother’s ear has caught the sound, and she beckons you to her, and folds you again in her embrace.  You whisper to her what you wish.  She rises, and takes you by the hand, to lead you to the bedside.

The Doctor looks very solemnly as we approach.  He takes out his watch.  He is not counting Charlie’s pulse, for he has dropped his hand, and it lies carelessly, but oh, how thin! over the edge of the bed.

He shakes his head mournfully at your mother; and she springs forward, dropping your hand, and lays her fingers upon the forehead of the boy, and passes her hand over his mouth.

“Is he asleep, Doctor?” she says in a tone you do not know.

“Be calm, madam.”  The Doctor is very calm.

“I am calm,” says your mother; but you do not think it, for you see her tremble very plainly.

“Dear madam, he will never waken in this world!”

There is no cry,—­only a bowing down of your mother’s head upon the body of poor dead Charlie!—­and only when you see her form shake and quiver with the deep, smothered sobs, your crying bursts forth loud and strong.

The Doctor lifts you in his arms, that you may see that pale head,—­those blue eyes all sunken,—­that flaxen hair gone,—­those white lips pinched and hard!—­Never, never will the boy forget his first terrible sight of Death!