A woman turned from the crowd as Clemence approached.  “He ran away,” she said, “and I suppose came down here to play, and fell into the lake.  It’s no fault of mine.  I’ve warned him often enough to keep away, and now he has only received the reward of all disobedient children.”

Clemence strove to speak, and brand this woman as a murderess, in the sight of God, but the words died on her lips, and she fell down, where she stood, as lifeless as the still figure before them.

There had now happened to Clemence Graystone, that which, it seemed, in her forlorn situation, was the worst that fate could inflict upon her; her health failed entirely.  She grew; sick, even “unto death.”  The long days of the late summer and the early autumn passed, and she lay, in her pale beauty, upon a couch of pain.  The world, this busy, struggling, toilsome world, seemed slipping from her grasp, and heaven was very near to her.  Her tired feet had borne her to the very brink of the dark river, whose waters chanted their solemn requiem, as the child had told her in his dream.  She longed to follow him, and sometimes, in her delirium, would cry out his name suddenly, with every endearing accent.  It seemed almost as if the words of the boy had been prophetic, and his strange dream was thus to be fulfilled.

He lay now in the very spot that his childish eyes had sought longingly, and one who remembered him came daily to place the beautiful flowers he had loved in life above his grave.  Poor little Ruth! her days passed sadly enough.  Her only friend might soon be taken from her.  Her all was centred in the slight, attenuated form, that lay tossing restlessly upon what might be her death-bed.  The little patient watcher grew each day paler as hope died out, and, notwithstanding the remonstrances of the elder woman, she only left Clemence’s bedside for her daily walk to the graveyard.

Ulrica Hardyng cared for the two who had been so strangely committed to her care, as though they had been the sisters God had denied her.  She hung over the sufferer, administering her medicine, and allowing none but the doctor and the hired nurse to approach her.

“There shall be none of these rude creatures about you, my darling,” she would say determinedly; “they have done you harm enough already.”

She despised these people, as was natural, from her very nature, which was generous, but given to strong likes and dislikes, and their treatment of the orphan girl had brought upon them her lasting contempt.  She had also before had a specimen of their tender mercies, and was fully aware of the adverse judgment that had been passed upon her own actions upon her advent among them.  She thought, therefore, that little good could be got from associating with any of them, though, like a real lady, she took care to be always civil and polite to every one.

When the news of Clemence’s dangerous illness was spread throughout the town, there were many to grieve for the sweet-faced stranger, who had so lately come among them, and there were some to wonder what would become of her if she should linger along without finally recovering her health.