Thus matters went on for several months.  Mrs. Mayberry working late and early.  The natural result was, a gradual failure of strength.  In the morning, when she awoke, she would feel so languid and heavy, that to rise required a strong effort, and even after she was up, and attempted to resume her labors, her trembling frame almost refused to obey the dictates of her will.  At length, nature gave way.  One morning she was so sick that she could not rise.  Her head throbbed with a dizzy, blinding pain—­her whole body ached, and her skin burned with fever.  Hiram got something for the children to eat, and then taking the youngest, a little girl about two years old, into the house of a neighbor who had showed them some good will, asked her if she would take care of his sister until he returned home at dinner time.  This the neighbor readily consented to do—­promising, also, to call in frequently to see his mother.

At dinner time Hiram found his mother quite ill.  She was no better at night.  For three days the fever raged violently.  Then, under the careful treatment of their old family physician, it was subdued.  After that she gradually recovered, but very slowly.  The physician said she must not attempt again to work as she had done.  This injunction was scarcely necessary.  She had not the strength to do so.

“I don’t see what you will do, Mrs. Mayberry,” a neighbor who had often aided her by kind advice, said, in reply to the widows statement of her unhappy condition.  “You cannot maintain these children, certainly.  And I don’t see how, in your present feeble state, you are going to maintain yourself.  There is but one thing that I can advise, and that advice I give with reluctance.  It is to endeavor to get two of your children into some orphan asylum.  The youngest you may be able to keep with you.  The oldest can support himself at something or other.”

The pale cheek of Mrs. Mayberry grew paler at this proposition.  She half sobbed, caught her breath, and looked her adviser with a strange, bewildered stare in the face.

“O, no!  I cannot do that!  I cannot be separated from my dear little children.  Who will care for them like a mother?”

“It is hard, I know, Mrs. Mayberry.  But necessity is a stern ruler.  You cannot keep them with you—­that is certain.  You have not the strength to provide them with even the coarsest food.  In an asylum, with a kind matron, they will be better off than under any other circumstances.”

But Mrs. Mayberry shook her head.

“No—­no—­no,” she replied—­“I cannot think of such a thing.  I cannot be separated from them.  I shall soon be able to work again—­better able than before.”

The neighbor who felt deeply for her, did not urge the matter.  When Hiram returned at dinner time, his face had in it a more animated expression than usual.

“Mother,” he said, as soon as he came in, “I heard today that a boy was wanted at the Gazette office, who could write a good hand.  The wages were to be four dollars a week.”