CHAPTER II.
THE DYING FATHER.
Stephen stepped over the threshold into a low, dark room, which was filled with smoke, from a sudden gust of the wind as it swept over the roof of the hut.

On one side of the grate, which was made of some half-hoops of iron fastened into the rock, there was a very aged man, childish and blind with years, who was crouching towards the fire, and talking and chuckling to himself.

A girl, about a year older than Stephen, sat in a rocking-chair, and swung to and fro as she knitted away fast and diligently at a thick grey stocking.

In the corner nearest to the fireplace there stood a pallet-bed, hardly raised above the earthen floor, to which Stephen hastened immediately, with an anxious look at the thin, white face of his father lying upon the pillow.

Beside the sick man there lay a little child fast asleep, with her hand clasping one of her father's fingers; and though James Fern was shaking and trembling with a violent fit of coughing from the sudden gust of smoke, he took care not to loose the hold of those tiny fingers.
'Poor little Nan!' he whispered to Stephen, as soon as he could speak.
'I've been thinking all day of her and thee, lad, till I'm nigh heart-broken.' 'Do you feel worse, father ?' asked Stephen anxiously.
'I'm drawing nearer the end,' answered James Fern,--'nearer the end every hour; and I don't know for certain what the end will be.