He brushed them away, stooping so close to her that he took her tainted breath, hot and fetid, but felt no fear. At last she began to talk again, and this time of the sled and the rides she had upon it, and of the prayers Kenneth had heard and the “Stir-up Collect” that he did not know. “Do you know it now?” she asked, rather sharply. Kenneth nodded, and she continued: “Say it.” He said it, and she went on: “Do you know ‘I believe’?” He nodded again, and to her command, “Say it,” he repeated the Creed, which she tried to say with him, but the words died on her lips. “You are a good boy,” she said in a whisper, “and I am tired. Let us say, ‘Now I lay me,’ and then I’ll go to sleep.” He said it with her, her voice growing weaker as she added, very slowly, the old, familiar “God bless Auntie and Connie and make her a good girl, and bless Kenneth and make him a good boy. Amen!” She raised her hand as if in benediction; then it fell helplessly at her side, her eyes closed, and she seemed to be asleep. For days she lay in this state, neither speaking nor moving, while the battle between life and death went on, and in Kenneth’s heart hope died out as he watched her day and night, never leaving her except for the rest and food he must take, or give out. Many inquiries were made for her, and prayers were said in the church on the Corners, at St. Jude’s in Rocky Point and at the churches in Millville, while Kenneth prayed unceasingly that she might be given back to him, even though the _he_ of whom she had raved should come to claim her. One morning Dr. Catherin came and looked at her as she lay white as a corpse and as motionless. “I think the end is near,” he said, taking his stand on one side of the bed, while Kenneth was on the other, his eyes fixed on the face where the death shadows were gathering. Only a faint fluttering of the heart told that she breathed, and this might stop at any moment. And while they sat watching here there came to the door a middle-aged woman, whose face would command attention at once, it was so calm and sweet and kind. Addressing herself to Mrs. Stannard, she said: “How is she? I was passing, and stopped to inquire.” “Dying,” was Mrs. Stannard’s reply, while over the stranger’s face there came an expression betokening some inward conflict. “Dying,” she repeated. “Have the doctors given her up?” “Yes; they can do no more for her,” was the tearful answer, while the woman stood a moment, wrapt in thought or prayer. Then she said: “May I see the doctor?” “Which one? Two are with her,” Mrs. Stannard said, and the woman replied: “Both, if you please.” They came,—Dr. Catherin and Kenneth,—the former looking curiously at the woman, who, very respectfully, and with no cringing in her manner, said to them: “I hear you have done all you can for the young lady,—that you have given her up. Is that so?”