hope of her boy and girl's life was about to be lost; she struggled with the woman with all her might; she screamed aloud; she lost her hold; she seized a pistol from the table, and close as she was to her adversary, fired it full at her. The mother fell, with a shriek. Ellen started forward and broke her fall, and laid hold on the child to free it from her dying grasp. "Give him me, give him me!" said the mother, struggling to lift herself up, and stretching her hands out for the boy. The trembling Ellen stooped to give him to her, but the child's head dropped on one side as she held him out; he made no effort to get into his mother's arms. Ellen wildly raised his face, and he was dead too. The shot had gone through his breast to his mother's, and a little blood began to steal from his lips. "He's dead!" said the mother, who was herself passing away. "Oh, my boy!" and then feebly, with her fast-failing strength, she raised him, after more than one effort, in her arms, and pressed her lips to his twice, with all the passion that death left in her. The wasted form of the child lay there, all pale and withered, the straight brown hair was parted on his thin forehead; the mother's uncovered breast, where his head rested, was white, and the hands delicate; the raiment was luxurious; that head had not been reared in the expectation of dying on a bed of rock. Ellen burst into floods of tears, and wrung her hands as she stood by, looking on what she had done. The woman lifted her eyes, and tried to form her lips into a smile; she no longer felt any vehement passion, and the torment of thirst was now only one of the pangs of death. Her eyes wandered to the water, but when Ellen moved to fetch some, she stopped her. "No; it was for him. He is at ease now. You did right. Don't grieve." "Forgive me," said Ellen, kneeling down at her side. "Oh yes! the poor precious babe suffers no more. I was mad; you said truly in that. I nursed him at my breast till his lips grew dry even there; we lived not far from your cavern, and I have seen you, and been glad you had water. We had some. _We?_ Yes, is not my husband dead; and my boy is dead too! See, there is blood on his face; wipe it away; he will die else." Ellen's sobs caught her wandering attention. "I remember now, you killed him; oh, good angel, guardian angel! you have killed him, and there is only I to suffer. He is gone from this dear, dear body; I wish it did not look so like him still--and it looks in pain too--it looks thirsty." Ellen hid her own face on the mother's shoulder for an instant.--Her children had awakened at the noise of the pistol, and they were out of bed and clinging around her; her sorrow roused theirs, and the sound of their lamentation reached the dying woman's ear. "There are my children crying. Alas! I thought they had all been dead." "They are mine," said Ellen. "Yours are at rest, yours _are_ all dead."