The illness of Miss Thusa was very sudden. She had risen in the morning in usual health, and pursued until noon her customary occupation--when, all at once, as she told the young doctor, "it seemed as if a knife went through her heart, and a wedge into her brain--and she was sure it was a death-stroke." For the first time, in the course of her long life, she was obliged to take her bed, and there she lay in helplessness and loneliness, unable to summon relief. The young doctor called in the afternoon as a friend, and found his services imperatively required as a physician. The only wish she expressed was to have Helen with her, and as soon as he had relieved the sufferings of his patient, Arthur brought Helen to the Hermitage. When she arrived, Miss Thusa was under the influence of an opiate, but opening her heavy eyes, a ray of light emanated from the dim, gray orbs, as Helen, pale and awe-struck, approached her bedside. She was appalled at seeing that powerful frame so suddenly prostrated--she was shocked at the change a few hours had wrought in those rough, but commanding features. The large eye-balls looked sunken, and darkly shaded below, while a wan, gray tint, melting off into a bluish white on the temples, was spread over the face. "You will stay with me to-night, my child," said she, in a voice strangely altered. "I've got something to tell you--and the time is come." "Yes. I will stay with you as long as you wish, Miss Thusa," replied Helen, passing her hand softly over the hoary looks that shaded the brow of the sufferer. "I will nurse you so tenderly, that you will soon be well again." "Good child--blessed child!" murmured she, closing her eyes beneath the slumberous weight of the anodyne, and sinking into a deep sleep. And now Helen sat alone, watching the aged friend, whose strongly-marked and peculiar character had had so great an influence on her own. For awhile the echo of Arthur's parting words made so much music in her ear, it drowned the harsh, solemn ticking of the old clock, and stole like a sweet lullaby over her spirit. But gradually the ticking sounded louder and louder, and her loneliness pressed heavily upon her. There was a little, dark, walnut table, standing on three curiously wrought legs, in a corner of the room. On this a large Bible, covered with dark, linen cloth, was laid, and on the top of this Miss Thusa's spectacles, with the bows crossing each other, like the stiffened arms of a corpse. Helen could not bear to look upon those spectacles, which had always seemed to her an inseparable part of Miss Thusa, lying so still and melancholy there. She took them up reverently, and laid them on a shelf, then drawing the table near the fire, or rather carrying it, so as not to awaken the sleeper, she opened the sacred book. The first words which happened to meet her eye, were-- "Where is God, my Maker, who giveth me songs in the night?"