So this is the way in which Barbara's hope dies! Our hopes have as many ways of dying as our bodies.

Sometimes they pine and fall into a slow consumption, we nursing, cockering, and physicking them to the last.
Sometimes they fall down dead suddenly, as one that in full health, with his bones full of marrow, and his eyes full of light, drops wordless into the next world unaware.

This last has been Barbara's case.

When she thought it healthiest, and most vigorous in its stalwart life, then the death-mark was on it.

To most of us, O friends, troubles are as great stones cast unexpectedly on a smooth road; over which, in a dark night, we trip, and grumblingly stumble, cursing, and angrily bruising our limbs.