“Miss May, master says you need not trouble about the medicine.  I am to sleep in the room and take care of this little girl.”

“Very well.  See that she is properly attended to, as my brother directed.  My head aches miserably, or I should remain myself.”

She glanced at the bed, and left the room.  Harriet leaned over the pillow and examined the orphan’s countenance.  The eyes were closed, but scalding tears rolled swiftly over the cheeks, and the hands were clasped over the brow, as if to still its throbbings.  Harriet’s face softened, and she said kindly: 

“Poor thing! what ails you?  What makes you cry so?”

Beulah pressed her head closer to the pillow, and murmured: 

“I am so miserable!  I want to die, and God will not take me.”

“Don’t say that till you see whether you’ve got the scarlet fever.  If you have, you are likely to be taken pretty soon, I can tell you; and if you haven’t, why, it’s all for the best.  It is a bad plan to fly in the Almighty’s face that way, and tell him what he shall do and what he shan’t.”

This philosophic response fell unheeded on poor Beulah’s ears, and Harriet was about to inquire more minutely into the cause of her grief, but she perceived her master standing beside her, and immediately moved away from the bed.  Drawing out his watch, he counted the pulse several times.  The result seemed to trouble him, and he stood for some minutes watching the motionless form.

“Harriet, bring me a glass of ice-water.”

Laying his cool hand on the hot forehead of the suffering girl, he said tenderly: 

“My child, try not to cry any more to-night.  It is very bitter, I know; but remember that, though Lilly has been taken from you, from this day you have a friend, a home, a guardian.”

Harriet proffered the glass of water.  He took it, raised the head, and put the sparkling draught to Beulah’s parched lips.  Without unclosing her eyes, she drank the last crystal drop, and, laying the head back on the pillow, he drew an armchair before the window at the further end of the room, and seated himself.

CHAPTER VII.

Through quiet, woody dells roamed Beulah’s spirit, and, hand in hand, she and Lilly trod flowery paths and rested beside clear, laughing brooks.  Life, with its grim realities, seemed but a flying mist.  The orphan hovered on the confines of eternity’s ocean, and its silent waves almost laved the feet of the weary child.  The room was darkened, and the summer wind stole through the blinds stealthily, as if awed by the solitude of the sick-chamber.  Dr. Hartwell sat by the low French bedstead, holding one emaciated hand in his, counting the pulse which bounded so fiercely in the blue veins.  A fold of white linen containing crushed ice lay on her forehead, and the hollow cheeks and thin lips were flushed to vermilion hue.  It was not scarlet, but brain fever,