Carefully closing the door upon the sleeping child, I followed the light steps of Mrs. C--- along the passage, until we reached the head of the main staircase, then, turning to the right, we entered the large public ballroom. In the first chamber of many that opened into this spacious apartment we found the object that we sought. Stretched upon a low bed, with a feather fan in his hand, to keep off the flies that hovered in tormenting clusters round his head, lay the dying Michael Macbride. The face of the young man was wasted by disease and mental anxiety; and if the features were not positively handsome, they were well and harmoniously defined, and a look of intelligence and sensibility pervaded his countenance, which greatly interested me in his behalf. His face was deathly pale, as pale as marble, and his large sunken eyes shone with unnatural brilliancy, their long dark lashes adding an expression of intense melancholy to the patient endurance of suffering that marked his fine countenance. His nose was shrunk and drawn in about the nostrils, his feverish lips apart, in order to admit a free passage for the labouring breath, their bright red glow affording a painful contrast to the ghastly glitter of the brilliant white teeth within. The thick black curls that clustered round his high forehead were moist with perspiration, and the same cold unwholesome dew trickled in large drops down his hollow temples. It was impossible to mistake these signs of approaching dissolution--it was evident to all present that death was not far distant. An indescribable awe crept over me. He looked so tranquil, so sublimed by suffering, that I felt my self unworthy to be his teacher. "Michael," I said, taking the long thin white hand that lay so listlessly on the coverlid, "I am sorry to see you so ill." He looked at me attentively for a few minutes.--"Do not say sorry, Ma'am; rather say glad. I am glad to get away from this bad world--young as I am--I am so weary of it." He sighed deeply, and tears filled his eyes. "I heard that you wished some one to read to you." "Yes, the Bible!" he cried, trying to raise himself in the bed, while his eager eyes were turned to me with an earnest, imploring expression. "I have it here. Are you able to read it for yourself?" "I can read--but my eyes are so dim. The shadows of death float between me and the world; I can no longer see objects distinctly. But oh, Madam, if my soul were light, I should not heed this blindness. But all is dark here," laying his hand on his breast,--"dark as the grave." I opened the sacred book, but my own tears for a moment obscured the page. While I was revolving in my own mind what would be the best to read to him, the book was rudely wrenched from my hand by a tall, gaunt woman, who just then entered the room.