And night came, and she laid her child down to rest, and again sat working and watching. She kissed it when its low cry startled her in the midnight silence, and hushed it again to sleep, for it wanted food and that she had not. The morning came, but it was still night to her, and the darkness of her woe sat hovering over her frail soul like the shadow of a great but silent misery. She hurried on in the delirium of extreme weakness that she might complete the wretched work she had, and get food for her famished child. Intense suffering, long watching, hunger, cold, and cruelty had blanched a cheek which had been more fair than snow, and had carved wrinkles, like those of age, upon a youthful brow; death hovered over her like a ghastly shadow, not to her--as to those in comfort--terrible, but welcome. And thus from hour to hour, and from day to day, that mother labored for her lonely child, while he, whose heart should have beat with the devotion of love for her whom he had sworn to cherish, and whose hand should have been ever ready to defend her, deeming nothing too severe, nothing too difficult, which could bring food and comfort to a woman's constant heart, came only to rob her of her last morsel, and to add fresh agonies to her almost withered soul by imprecations and curses. One morning, after she had been toiling long in cold and hunger, she became too weak to labor more, and nature faltered. She stooped to kiss her babe and to ask a blessing on its head from Him whose benedictions come even to the sorrowful and needy, and as she bent down above its little shadowy form, her sorrows overwhelmed her, and she fell down beside her child and fainted. With none to aid and soothe her--with none to nourish her in her distress of heart, and no kind hand to minister to the poor watcher in that hour of affliction, she lay in that sweet peace which comes to the aching heart when it can for a time forget its sorrows; and better too, perhaps, for her, for her babe was dying, and in the unconsciousness of temporary death, she knew it not. She awoke at last, for even the forgetfulness so dear to the wounded spirit will have an end, and the grim bitter realities become palpable once more; and as consciousness returned she was startled from her partial dream by the icy chill which fell upon her when she touched her child. She shrieked wildly, and fell upon her face in the maddening agony of despair, "my child, my child, oh, my child!" she cried, and tore her hair in frenzy. Now she became more calm, and turned round to look upon the babe, whose soul had passed into that better sleep from which there is no waking. She kissed its cold wasted form, and bathed its little marble face with her scalding tears.