For two hours William had been resting on the shoulder of Eva Meredith, his heart against her heart, his lips pressed to hers, receiving her kisses and her tears. I approached him, and, without expending useless words, I endeavoured to raise and lead him from the room; but he resisted, and his arms clasped his mother more closely. This resistance, the first the poor child had ever offered to living creature, touched my very soul. On my renewing the attempt, however, William yielded; he made a movement and turned towards me, and I saw his beautiful countenance suffused with tears. Until that day, William had never wept. I was greatly startled and moved, and I let the child throw himself again upon his mother's corpse. "Take him away," said Lord James. "My lord," I exclaimed, "he weeps! Ah, check not his tears!" I bent over the child, and heard him sob. "William! dear William!" I cried, anxiously taking his hand, "why do you weep, William?" For the second time he turned his head towards me; then, with a gentle look, full of sorrow, "My mother is dead," he replied. I have not words to tell you what I felt. William's eyes were now intelligent: his tears were sad and significant; and his voice was broken as when the heart suffers. I uttered a cry; I almost knelt down beside Eva's bed. "Ah! you were right, Eva!" I exclaimed, "not to despair of the mercy of God!" Lord James himself had started. Lady Mary was as pale as Eva. "Mother! mother!" cried William, in tones that filled my heart with joy; and then, repeating the words of Eva Meredith--those words which she had so truly said he would find at the bottom of his heart--the child exclaimed aloud, "I am dying, my son. Your father is dead; you are alone upon the earth; you must pray to the Lord!" I pressed gently with my hand upon William's shoulder; he obeyed the impulse, knelt down, joined his trembling hands--this time it was of his own accord--and, raising to heaven a look full of life and feeling: "My God! have pity on me!" he murmured. I took Eva's cold hand. "Oh mother! mother of many sorrows!" I exclaimed, "can you hear your child? do you behold him from above? Be happy! your son is saved!" Dead at Lady Mary's feet, Eva made her rival tremble; for it was not I who led William from the room, it was Lord James Kysington who carried out his grandson in his arms. I have little to add, ladies. William recovered his reason and departed with Lord James. Reinstated in his rights, he was subsequently his grandfather's sole heir. Science has recorded a few rare instances of intelligence revived by a violent moral shock. Thus does the fact I have related find a natural explanation. But the good women of the village, who had attended Eva Meredith during her illness, and had heard her fervent prayers, were convinced that, even as she had asked of Heaven, the soul of the mother had passed into the body of the child.