Another minute, and the child stood beside his couch. The evening sun shone full upon her; she had grown tall and thin from her long illness; the beautiful fair hair had been shaved off, but the soft yellow down peeped under the pretty cap border; the great blue eyes had a solemn, unchildlike look in them; a little wasted hand crept into the sick man's, and then patted it softly. "Humph! so you are better, aye, after nearly frightening that sister of yours to death," with a milder growl than Queenie expected. "I am much better, thank you, Uncle Andrew," returned Emmie, gravely; and then, perfectly undaunted by the grim, death-like face on the pillow before her, she clambered up on the bed beside it, and sat perched before him like a large soft-eyed bird. "Queenie thought I was going to die, and cried dreadfully every night; Cathy told me so. Are you going to die, Uncle Andrew?" "It seems so," with a chord of ineffable bitterness rasping the thin voice. Emmie leaned forward and stroked his face pityingly, with an old-fashioned womanliness that touched her sister greatly. "I am so sorry; it seems such a pity, just as we were going to be fond of you; it will be so strange, too, missing you out of my prayers every night, not that it will do any harm to go on saying, 'God bless you,' even after you are dead," continued Emmie, reflectively, and in a slightly puzzled tone. "I asked Queenie about that, and she said she was not sure." In spite of his iron nerve Mr. Calcott winced slightly. This mere babe was playing round the feet of the king of Terror, while he was quailing secretly at the thought of the skeleton hand raised ready to strike: it would find him in his darkness and loneliness; his truest friend would come to him in the guise of an enemy. He was not a weak man, but at this moment the thought of his solitary death-bed caused him to thrill with premonitory pain and anguish. And then, with an odd transition of idea, he remembered how one night, when he was a lad, he had been wakened from his sleep by an awful storm; and his little sister Emily had come crying to his bed-side, and had clung to him in an agony of terror. He remembered, as though it were yesterday, the little shivering figure in white, the tangled fair hair under the cap border, the childish voice broken with sobs, "Oh Andrew, dear Andrew, take care of me; I am so frightened." "You are only a girl, Emmie; boys and men are never frightened; why I don't know what fear is," he had returned, half scoffingly, and yet proud to shield her, and to feel himself strong in his boy's strength. Ah, he knew what fear meant now. He thought, with the cold clammy sweat of superstitious terror, of what the coffin lid would cover; while a child's lips blessed him--him, Andrew Calcott, dead, unloved, and unremembered--blessed him in her prayers.