"Oh, what shall we do to save him? Oh, Tom, pray, pray! Little Willie was well on Saturday--and now--How can we tell what a day may bring forth?" Lucy cried, wildly pushing him away from her, and rising from the sofa. Then she began to pace about the room as we all do in trouble, clasping her hands in a wild and inarticulate appeal to heaven. Death had never come across her path before save in the case of her father, an old man whose course was run, and his end a thing necessary and to be looked for. She could not get out of her eyes the vision of that little solemn figure, so motionless, so marble white. The thought would not leave her. To see the calm Lucy pacing up and down in this passion of terror and agony made Sir Tom almost as miserable as herself. He tried to take her into his arms, to draw her back to the sofa. "My darling, you are over-excited. It has been too much for you," he said. "Oh, what does it matter about me?" cried Lucy; "think--oh, God! oh, God I--if we should have _that_ to bear." "My dear love--my Lucy, you that have always been so reasonable--the child is quite well; come and see him again and satisfy yourself." "Little Willie was quite well on Saturday," she cried again. "Oh, I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it! and why should it be poor Ellen and not me?" When a person of composed mind and quiet disposition is thus carried beyond all the bounds of reason and self-restraint, it is natural that everybody round her should be doubly alarmed. Lucy's maid hung about the door, and the nurse, wrapped in a shawl, stole out of little Tom's room. They thought their mistress had the hysterics, and almost forced their way into the room to help her. It did Sir Tom good to send these busybodies away. But he was more anxious himself than words could say. He drew her arms within his, and walked up and down with her. "You know, my darling, what the Bible says, 'that one shall be taken and another left; and that the wind bloweth where it listeth,'" he said, with a pardonable mingling of texts. "We must just take care of him, dear, and hope the best." Here Lucy stopped, and looked him in the face with an air of solemnity that startled him. "I have been thinking," she said; "God has tried us with happiness first. That is how He always does--and if we abuse _that_ then there comes--the other. We have been so happy. Oh, so happy!" Her face, which had been stilled by this profounder wave of feeling, began to quiver again. "I did not think any one could be so happy," she said. "Well, my darling! and you have been very thankful and good----" "Oh, no, no, no," she cried. "I have forgotten my trust. I have let the poor suffer, and put aside what was laid upon me--and now, now----" Lucy caught her husband's arm with both her hands, and drew him close to her. "Tom, God has sent his angel to warn us," she said, in a broken voice.