But, if you'll believe it, jest as I had begun to inquire, and take comfort, she branched right off, a lady-like branch, and a courteous one, but still a branch, and begun to talk about “what should she do--what could she do--for the boy.” And she looked down on him as he lay there, with such a boundless love, and a awful dread in her eyes, that it was pitiful in the extreme to see her; and says she,-- “What will become of him in the future, aunt Samantha, with the laws as they are now?” [Illustration: THE BABY.] And with such a chin and mouth as he has got, says I to myself, lookin' down on him; but I didn't say it out loud. I am too well bread. “It must be we can get the laws changed before he grows up. I dare not trust him in a world that has such temptations, such snares set ready for him. Why,” says she--And she fairly trembled as she said it. She would always throw her whole soul into any thing she undertook; and in this she had throwed her hull heart, too, and her hull life--or so it seemed to me, to look at her pale face, and her big, glowin' eyes, full of sadness, full of resolve too. “Why, just think of it! How he will be coaxed into those drinking-saloons! how, with his easy, generous, good-natured ways,--and I know he will have such ways, and be popular,--a bright, handsome young man, and with plenty of money. Just think of it! how, with those open saloons on every side of him, when he can't walk down the street without those gilded bars shining on every hand; and the friends he will make, gay, rich, thoughtless young men like himself--they will laugh at him if he refuses to do as they do; and with my boy's inherited tastes and temperament, his easiness to be led by those he loves, what will hinder him from going to ruin as his poor father did? What will keep him, aunt Samantha?” And she busted out a cryin'. I says, “Hush, Cicely,” layin' my hand on hern. It wus little and soft, and trembled like a leaf. Some folks would have called her nervous and excitable; but I didn't, thinkin' what she had went through with the boy's father. Says I, “There is One who is able to save him. And, instead of gettin' yourself all worked up over what may never be, I think it would be better to ask Him to save the boy.” “I do ask Him, every day, every hour,” says she, sobbin' quieter like. “Wall, then, hush up, Cicely.” And sometimes she would hush up, and sometimes she wouldn't. But how she would talk about what she wanted to do for him! I heard her talkin' to her uncle Josiah one day. You see, she worried about the boy to that extent, and loved him so, that she would have been willin' to have had her head took right off, if that would have helped him, if it would have insured him a safe and happy future; but it wouldn't: and so she was willin' to do any other hard job if there wus any prospect of its helpin' the boy. She wus willin' to vote on the temperance question.