The next morning, Mrs. Clifton was so weary that she could only leave her bed-chamber to lie upon the sofa in the shady parlor, where she could be at hand to direct the operations of her house servants—now engaged in cutting out and making up the Fall clothing for the negroes. Catherine came early to assist in this onerous task. It was in the afternoon while the lady was still reclining on the sofa, and Catherine standing at a work-table basting a linsey-woolsey frock-body—when a horse was heard to gallop up into the yard, a man to jump off and hasten up the steps of the piazza, and the instant after, old Mr. Clifton entered the parlor, looking very much flurried and alarmed. “What is the matter? I hope Carolyn is no worse?” asked the lady, anxious, yet calm. “No! Yes! A great deal better of course since the turn last night! Most malignant form of the disease, and growing rapidly worse every hour. _I tell you it is!_ The doctor affirms it!” Mrs. Clifton gazed at him in a sort of self-possessed perplexity. “She has got the small-pox, madam.” “The small-pox!” “Yes, madam, the confluent small-pox, in its worst form.” “You astonish me! I trust—I believe you are mistaken!” “No—I wish to Heaven I was! No, madam! Doctor’s opinion!” “Why, how on earth. Sit down, Mr. Clifton! Kate, my dear, wheel that arm-chair around.” Catherine obeyed, and the old gentleman sank among its soft cushions, and took out his pocket-handkerchief and wiped his face. “How on earth could she have got it?” asked Mrs. Clifton. “Ah! Lord Almighty knows! Came spontaneously, I do suppose! You noticed those two pimples that appeared upon her forehead after the crisis of her fever passed?” “Yes; but I thought nothing of them.”