But with all her cheerfulness, and self-forgetting, heroic courage, Mary was not proof against danger and disease. It is well for us to learn that the laws of nature are not suspended nor diverted from their course, even by the strongest faith, or for the sake of the most noble and useful laborer. Such a laborer there was here; but it was hardly to be expected that she would pass unharmed, the second time, through such exposure, fatigue, and painful anxiety. If the transition was great, at first, from that barren and comfortless place to the luxuries of Penrith, the change back again must have been peculiarly trying. She speaks of the difference between the two places as equal to that between the most sumptuous dwelling in Boston and the farm-house at Brush Hill. Nay, the contrast there was yet greater; for the common cottages in Yorkshire had no floors for the first story, except of clay and sand. Such was the house in which all that previous sickness and death had occurred, and in which the nurse and servant of all now found herself again. Sending away to another house the melancholy and moaning young man, and fixing up a bed for herself in a corner of her aunt's small room, she endeavored to keep herself from the night air, particularly as the weather, after a long course of warm rains, became intensely cold. But in vain did she shun exposure. There was work to be done out of doors as well as in, and no one but herself to do it. A sudden and severe cramp seized her, and she at last fell upon the floor, when alone in the night, and there lay a long time, utterly helpless, striving to make her groans heard by some one in or out of the house. This left her in a state of extreme debility, from which nothing could for a long time raise her. She would make it appear a light matter when it was over, but it is evident, from her own expressions and other facts, that she was in great danger. "_Penrith, February 10, 1826._ "MY DEAR EMMA:-- "Your last letter was a cordial to me, and came at a time when I greatly needed it; for I was actually suffering under all the evil which you were fearing for me when you wrote it,--confined to the chamber of that little cottage which I have described to you, weak and languid, the mere shadow of what I was when I parted from you. But for the cause and effect of my last visit to Osmotherly I must refer you to my letters to N. C. P. and Mrs. B----; you know I cannot bear to tell the same tale twice, more especially if it be a melancholy tale.