While he lay moaning on the pillows, she ran for ice-water and gave it to his hot lips, bound his forehead with wet napkins, and strove, in her sweet feminine way, to assuage the pain which had seized so fiercely upon him. To have seen that slight creature acting as a nurse to the being she most loved, you would hardly have believed it possible that she possessed sufficient energy to take a controlling lead in one of the most important law-cases that ever astonished our country—that she had breasted difficulties and outlived discouragements, before which strong men might have retreated, without a forfeiture of courage. In that sick-room she was gentle as childhood, but quick as lightning to seize upon any means of mitigating the pain that held that young man as in the embrace of a fiend. Hour after hour she watched in that sick-chamber. The doctor came, ordered the usual remedies, and went away again, with a heart that felt little and a face that told nothing at all. His course of practice was unvaried—the same medicines in almost every case—copious bleeding—vague, wild hopes in the loving hearts that ached around the bed—then the last fatal symptom and death—thus it went day after day. Poor Myra! how she searched that man’s leaden eyes for some little gleam of hope when he came into that sick-chamber! how eagerly she strove to read features that never changed to a thought or a feeling, even when death stood close by! Still she would not despair; had not every obstacle given way to the force of her own will so far in her life,—was she to be baffled and conquered now? To her warm heart it seemed impossible that death could strike a form so full of manly strength, or that she could live an hour after him if the great calamity did come. Alas! with all her experience and force, Myra was yet to learn how difficult it is for a human heart to break of grief, or exhaust itself with trouble. If a wish to die could induce the dark destroyer to strike, many a breathing—nay, blooming form would be lying low, which is now doomed to run its course to the end. One day, it was less than a week after the first attack, Myra was called to the bedside of her husband. A great and terrible change had come upon that splendid form; the flesh had seemed to melt away from his limbs like mist from the uplands; his eyes were hollow; the skin upon his forehead a yellowish brown. “Myra, my poor wife.” She bent down and kissed the fever-stained forehead. “My husband! you are better; there, the brightness is coming back to your eyes.” “No, Myra, no; I feel strangely but not better.” A movement of impotent sorrow revealed the struggle with which the poor woman strove to disprove this truth to her heart. “Don’t say that—you don’t understand; wait till the doctor comes, he will tell you that I am right.” The sick man moved his hand feebly on the pillow, and a moan broke from his lips.