“She’s sick enough now, then. She fell down in a fit this afternoon as sudden as if she’d been shot or struck with lightning! She was sitting at this very fire, knitting, when it happened. If I hadn’t been on the spot and picked her up in a minute she might ’a’ been burnt to death!” “Oh, how shocking! Oh, how sorry I am! What was it, mother? What sort of a fit?” “Monica says it is a paralytic stroke, just like that what laid her own old marster low. You see, Monica was in the room when it happened, and she helped me to tote the old woman to the settee and lay her on it. And then, while we ’plied hartshorn to her nose and beat her hands and that, I sent all the children in different directions to hunt for their father, for I didn’t exactly know whether he was in the barn or the stables, or where. But, law; we might as well ’a’ beat a dead corpse! She didn’t give no more signs of life, nor nothing!” “Oh, how _dreadful_!” cried Em., sitting down and clasping her hands. “Well, so it is; but you know Ann Whitlock was quite aged.” “She never had a spell of sickness in her life before, though!” “No, if she had had she might have died. As it is, she has lived to this old age until all her body is worn out at once, and down she draps!” “Has a doctor seen her? But, oh, of course not! There has been no time to get one here! But has a doctor been sent for, mother?” “I was just a-going to tell you, Em. The boys found their father in the stables and told him what had happened, and he told them to saddle one of the fastest horses and bring it round to the door for him, and he, you see, hurried on to the house as hard as ever he could to see exactly what was the matter. When he see Ann Whitlock lying in that state on the wooden settee he said how we must get her up to her own bed as soon as possible, and so he helped me and Monica to tote her upstairs, and, law, Em., it almost broke the three backs of us, she is such a heavy old woman, poor soul!” “Poor soul!” echoed the girl with a sigh. “Well, child, John left us to undress her and get her between the sheets as well as she could, and he mounted Queen Bess, and off he went for Greyrock to fetch a doctor, and as that is thirty miles off, he said he didn’t expect to be back much before to-morrow morning.” “And, oh, will she have to wait all that time for attendance?” exclaimed Em., clasping her hands in dismay. “She might have had to do so; but, thank fortune, she didn’t; for what do you think—as your father was tearing along for life and death on the river turnpike he met Dr. Willet full tilt in the road!” “DR. WILLET!” exclaimed Em. in astonishment.