"What does all this mean?
Never such a thing for these twenty years! Poor child! poor child!--Excuse me, madam," he said, after a little interval, but for what offence he did not mention.

A great deal might be forgiven, even to a man as old as Byles Gridley, looking upon such a face,--so lovely, yet so marked with the traces of recent suffering, and even now showing by its changes that she was struggling in some fearful dream.

Her forehead contracted, she started with a slight convulsive movement, and then her lips parted, and the cry escaped from them,--how heart-breaking when there is none to answer it,--"Mother!" Gone back again through all the weary, chilling years of her girlhood to that hardly remembered morning of her life when the cry she uttered was answered by the light of loving eyes, the kiss of clinging lips, the embrace of caressing arms! "It is better to wake her," Mrs.Lindsay said; "she is having a troubled dream.

Wake up, my child, here is a friend waiting to see you." She laid her hand very gently on Myrtle's forehead.

Myrtle opened her eyes, but they were vacant as yet.
"Are we dead ?" she said.