I have no mind to describe what Ellen suffered. Suffice it to say, that her treatment was soon reduced to watching her every minute night and day, and administering small quantities of milk. Her prostration and emaciation were excessive, and without the most constant attention she might at any moment have slipped out of our hands. I was like a man shipwrecked and alone in a polar country, whose existence depends upon one spark of fire, which he tries to cherish, left glimmering in a handful of ashes. Oh those days, prolonged to weeks, during which that dreadful struggle lasted—days swallowed up with one sole, intense, hungry desire that her life might be spared!—days filled with a forecast of the blackness and despair before me if she should depart. I tried to obtain release from the office. The answer was that nobody could of course prevent my being away, but that it was not usual for a clerk to be absent merely because his wife was not well. The brute added with a sneer that a wife was “a luxury” which he should have thought I could hardly afford. We divided between us, however, at home the twenty-four hours during which we stood sentinels against death, and occasionally we were relieved by one or two friends. I went on duty from about eight in the evening till one in the morning, and was then relieved by Mrs. Taylor, who remained till ten or eleven. She then went to bed, and was replaced by little Marie. What a change came over that child! I was amazed at her. All at once she seemed to have found what she was born to do. The key had been discovered, which unlocked and revealed what there was in her, of which hitherto I had been altogether unaware. Although she was so little, she became a perfect nurse. Her levity disappeared; she was grave as a matron, moved about as if shod in felt, never forgot a single direction, and gave proper and womanly answers to strangers who called. Faculties unsuspected grew almost to full height in a single day. Never did she relax during the whole of that dreadful time, or show the slightest sign of discontent. She sat by her mother’s side, intent, vigilant; and she had her little dinner prepared and taken up into the sickroom by Mrs. Taylor before she went to bed. I remember once going to her cot in the night, as she lay asleep, and almost breaking my heart over her with remorse and thankfulness—remorse, that I, with blundering stupidity, had judged her so superficially; and thankfulness, that it had pleased God to present to me so much of His own divinest grace. Fool that I was, not to be aware that messages from Him are not to be read through the envelope in which they are enclosed. I never should have believed, if it had not been for Marie, that any grown-up man could so love a child. Such love, I should have said, was only possible between man and woman, or, perhaps, between man and man. But now I doubt whether a love of that particular kind could be felt