But when Martha returned to the sick chamber, Harry had relapsed into unconsciousness, and she sat down, watching by him silently, as she had done before. Within a few hours the lawyer came. The whole country rang with the news of the accident, and people forgot how they had condemned poor Allenders, in pity for him, and for the family, whose singular devotion to him it needed little discernment to discover. So Mr. Robertson had left his house at once, to his own inconvenience, to come to the dying man. But Harry lay upon his bed, communing aloud with his own heart; and the very lawyer turned aside and wept, as he heard this heart laid open. A sinful man had Harry been!--shipwrecked and lost! Yet it was a child’s heart! And Martha’s words, or an influence more wonderful than them, was breathing on the chaos of this disturbed and wandering soul. Poor Harry! And his lips spoke aloud the texts and psalms which he had learned a child, at Martha’s knee. In the room there was a hush like death, through which now and then the restrained sob of Agnes struggled faintly. She was still lying in the same position, her face hidden, in prostrate, powerless grief; and Rose knelt beside her, pale as death, fixing the eyes, from which her tears fell down continually, upon Harry’s face, while her throat quivered now and then with a convulsive gasp. Martha, at his other side, with her head bent upon her folded arms, shook with great tremblings, like successive waves--but no sound came from her; and the lawyer, afraid to move, and full of awe, stood silent at the foot of the bed. Through this scene ascended Harry’s voice, low and faint, but distinctly audible; and now he reads from his child’s memory, what has been read by his bedside only recently, in hope to catch some passing gleam of consciousness--the last words of the Lord! Oh! wonderful, benign and tender words!--spoken under the very death-shadow, by that One who alone was free to redeem--who can tell what was their influence upon the rapt soul, which, past all human intercourse, was still open to the dealings of the Lord? Mysterious awe and wonder hushed even their very prayers. No human speech could move him now, or reach his veiled and hidden soul: but the way was all open to God. All through the night Harry continued thus--with broken prayers, and words of Holy Writ, mingling with the common things to which he sometimes returned--and towards the dawn he fell into a broken sleep. The lawyer, meanwhile, waited. It was a singular kindness; but Harry might awake out of his trance at any moment, and this man, who had a kindly heart, was concerned for the family, and sufficiently interested to give his time without much grudging. And they had all a vague expectation that Harry would awake from this sleep, in possession of his faculties.