Though careful to conceal his anxiety from his wife, Everard Sparks, disappointed and distressed, quitted the room in haste to send for the medical man who had long been the attendant of his family. But before he arrived, the shivering fit of the poor sufferer had increased to an alarming degree. A calming potion was administered, and orders issued that she was to be kept quiet; but in the consternation created in the little household by the communication Dr R. thought it necessary to make of the possibility of a premature confinement, poor Mrs Sparks's maid, a young inexperienced woman, dispatched a messenger to my house for her old kinswoman, and it was through Barbara I became acquainted with the melancholy incidents I am about to relate. The sedatives administered failed in their effect. A fatal shock had been already given; and while struggling through that direful night with the increasing pangs that verified the doctor's prognostications, the sympathizing women around the sufferer could scarcely restrain their tears at the courage with which she supported her anguish, rejoicing in it, as it were, in the prospect of embracing her child--when all present were aware that the compensation was about to be denied her, that the child was already dead. Just as the day dawned, her anxious husband was congratulated on her safety, and then the truth could no longer be concealed from Mary. She asked to see her babe. Her husband was employed to persuade her to defer seeing it for an hour or two, "till it was dressed--till she was more composed." But the truth rushed into her mind, and she uttered not another word, in the apprehension of increasing his disappointment and mortification. So long did her silence continue, that, trusting she had fallen asleep, old Barbara's granddaughter entreated poor Everard to withdraw and leave her to her rest. But the moment he quitted the room, she spoke, spoke resolutely, and in a firmer voice than her previous sufferings had given them reason to suppose possible. "Now, then, let me see my boy," said she. "I know that he is dead. But do not be afraid of shocking or distressing me. I have courage to look upon the poor little creature for whom I have suffered so much, and who, I trusted, would reward me for all." The women remonstrated, as it was their duty to remonstrate. But when they saw that opposition on this point only excited her, dreading an accession of fever, they brought the poor babe and laid it on the pillow beside its mother. That first embrace, to which she had looked forward with such intensity of delight, folded to her burning bosom only a clay-cold child!