Her eyes followed Mercy constantly, as a little babe's follow its mother; and she would not take a mouthful of food from any other hand.
It was the very hardest form of illness for Mercy to bear.

A violent and distressing disease, taxing her strength, her ingenuity to their utmost every moment, would have been comparatively nothing to her.

To sit day after day, night after night, gazing into the senseless yet appealing eyes of this motionless being, who had literally no needs except a helpless animal's needs of food and drink; who clung to her with the irrational clinging of an infant, yet would never know even her name again,--it was worse than the chaining of life to death.

As the days wore on, a species of terror took possession of Mercy.

It seemed to her that this silent watchful, motionless creature never had been her mother,--never had been a human being like other human beings.