As the fever which the doctor had predicted, increased, and Uncle Joseph grew more and more delirious, his cries for Sarah were heart-rending, making Jessie weep bitterly, as she said to Maddy: “If I knew where this Sarah was I’d go miles on foot to find her and bring her to him.” Something like this Jessie said to her mother when she went for a day to Aikenside, asking her in conclusion if she thought Sarah would go, supposing she could be found. “Perhaps,” and Agnes brushed abstractedly her long flowing hair, winding it around her fingers, and then letting the soft curls fall across her snowy arms. “Where do you suppose she is?” was Jessie’s next question, but if Agnes knew, she did not answer, except by reminding her little daughter that it was past her bed-time. The next morning Agnes’s eyes were very red, as if she had been wakeful the entire night, while her white face fully warranted the headache she professed to have. “Jessie,” she said, as they sat together at their breakfast, “I am going to Honedale to-day to see Maddy, and shall leave you here, as I do not care to have us both absent.” Jessie demurred a little at first, but finally yielded, wondering what had prompted this visit to the cottage. Maddy wondered so, too, as from the window she saw Agnes instead of Jessie alighting from the carriage, and was conscious of a thrill of gratification that Agnes should have come to see her. But Agnes’s business was with the sick man, poor Uncle Joseph, who was sleeping when she came, and so did not hear her voice as in the tidy kitchen she talked to Maddy, appearing extremely agitated, and casting her eyes rapidly from one part of the room to another, resting now upon the tinware hanging on the wall, and now upon the gourd swimming in the water-pail which stood in the old-fashioned sink, with the wooden spout, directly over the pile of stones covering the drain. These things were familiar to the proud woman; she had seen them before, and the sight of them brought to her a most remorseful regret for the past, while her heart ached cruelly as she wished she had never crossed that threshold, or, crossing it, had never brought ruin to one of its inmates. Agnes was changed in various ways. All hope of the doctor had long since been given up, and as Jessie grew older the mother nature was stronger within her, subduing her selfishness, and making her far more gentle and considerate for others than she had been before. To Maddy she was exceedingly kind, and never more so in manner than now, when they sat talking together in the humble kitchen at the cottage. “You look tired and sick,” she said. “Your cares have been too much for you. Let me sit by your uncle till he wakes, and you go up to bed.”