'It was terrible.

I don't know how we got through that half-hour--his mother and I.It was like wrestling with someone in agony.

At last he was exhausted--he let me say the Lord's Prayer; I think it soothed him, but one couldn't tell.

He seemed half asleep when I left.

Oh!' she cried, laying her hand in a close grasp on Rose's arm, 'if you had seen his eyes, and his poor hands--there was such despair in them! They say, though he was so young, he was thinking of getting married; and he was so steady, such a good son!' A silence fell upon the three.