All day she had watched him, for they told her that if he lived until the sun setting, there was hope, and as the hours wore on and the long shadows stretching to the eastward, betokened the approach of night, oh, how intense became the anxiety in her bosom. Fainter and softer grew the sunlight on the floor, and whiter grew the face of the sleeping boy. 'Twas the shadow of death, they said, and with a bitter wail of woe, Lina fell upon her knees, and as if she would compel the God of heaven to hear her, she shrieked, "Spare my child. Let him live, and I will bear whatsoever else of evil thou shalt send upon me. Afflict me in any other way and I can bear it, but spare to me my child." In mercy or in wrath, Lina Hastings' prayer was answered. The pulse grew stronger beneath her touch--the breath came faster through the parted lips--a faint moisture was perceptible beneath the yellow curls, and when the sun was set the soft eyes of Eddie Hastings unclosed, and turned with a look of recognition upon his mother, who, clasping him in her arms, wept for joy, but returned no word or thought of gratitude toward Him who had been thus merciful to her. In a small brown cottage in a distant part of the same village, another mother was watching beside her first-born, only son. They had been friends in their girlhood, she and Lina Hastings. Together they had conned the same hard tasks--together they had built their playhouse beneath the same old chestnut tree--together, hand in hand they wandered over the rocky hills and through the shady woods of New England, and at the same altar had they plighted their marriage vows, the one to the man she loved, the other to the man she tolerated for the sake of his surroundings. From this point their paths diverged, Lina moving in the sphere to which her husband's wealth had raised her, while Mabel Parkman one sad morning awoke from her sweet dream of bliss to find herself wedded to a drunkard! Only they who like her have experienced a similar awakening can know the bitterness of that hour, and yet methinks she was happier than the haughty Lina, for her love was no idle passion, and through weal and woe she clung to her husband, living oft on the remembrance of what he had been, and the hope of what he might be again, and when her little Willie was first laid upon her bosom, and she felt her husband's tears upon her cheek as he promised to reform for her sake and for his son's, she would not have exchanged her lot with that of the proudest in the land. That vow, alas, was ere long broken, and then, though she wept bitterly over his fall, she felt that she was not desolate, for there was music in her Willie's voice and sunshine in his presence.