Just risen from a bed of sickness, he required the hand of some tender nurse to restore his wasted vigor, instead of being reduced to the hard vigils of poverty and want. His recent disappointment, added to a cold which he had caught, increased his feverish debility; yet he adhered to the determination not to appropriate to his own subsistence the few valuables he had assigned as a deposit for the charges of his rent. During a fortnight he never tasted anything better than bread and water; but this hermit's fare was accompanied by the resigned thought that if it ended in death, his sufferings would then be over, and the widow amply remunerated by what little of his property remained. In this state of body and mind he received a most painful shock, when one evening, returning from a walk of many hours, in the place of his little favorite, he met Mrs. Robson in tears at the door. She told him William had been sickening all the day, and was now so delirious, that neither she nor his sister could keep him quiet. Thaddeus went to the side of the child's bed, where he lay gasping on the pillow, held clown by the crying Nanny. The count touched his cheek. "Poor child!" exclaimed he; "he is in a high fever. Have you sent for Mr. Vincent?" "O, no; I had not the heart to leave him." "Then I will go directly," returned Thaddeus "there is not a moment to be lost." The poor woman thanked him. Hastening through the streets with an eagerness which nearly overset several of the foot-passengers, he arrived at Lincoln's-Inn-fields; and in less than five minutes after he quitted Mrs. Robson's door he returned with the apothecary. On Mr. Vincent's examining the pulse and countenance of his little patient, he declared the symptoms to be the small-pox, which some casualty had repelled. In a paroxysm of distress, Mrs. Robson recollected that a girl had been brought into her shop three days ago, just recovered from that frightful malady. Thaddeus tried to subdue the fears of the grandmother, and at last succeeded in persuading her to go to bed, whilst he and Nanny would watch by the pillow of the invalid. Towards morning the disorder broke out on the child's face, and he recovered his recollection. The moment he fixed his eyes on the count, who was leaning over him, he stretched out his little arms, and begged to lie on his breast. Thaddeus refused him gently, fearing that by any change of position he might catch cold, and so again retard what had now so fortunately appeared; but the poor child thought the denial unkind, and began to weep so violently, that his anxious friend believed it better to gratify him than hazard the irritation of his fever by agitation and crying. Thaddeus took him out of bed, and rolling him in one of the blankets, laid him in his bosom; and drawing his dressing-gown to shield the little face from the fire, held him in that situation asleep for nearly two hours.