What a future for a four-year-old child! A burden to the world, a burden to himself, to live on for years after the mind is dead! To be an idiot for ever! It would be good for him if he could be made away with, surely. Will God take him? Or is it the Divine Will that he should live on as an example of a living curse, as a witness of the Almighty's chastising arm? Does he bear so much suffering by way of ransom for the sins of his father, his mother, and his grandfather?--or must the years of punishment be as many as the years of sin? Who will be merciful enough to put an end to his sufferings? His mother sits silent and watchful at the head of the bed. No, she cannot do it! After all she is his mother. The roots of that young flower are still but half detached from the soil of her heart. Death would be a benefit to him. Perchance it might be easier to forget him if he were under the sod. But man who does not endow with life, must not distribute death. Man must wait till the last of his allotted days has come. And yet only a few words would bring it to pass. The "death-bird" has whispered the magic spell, and Death will obey the summons. Yet she lacks the courage to summon him at a time when the very foundations of the earth are trembling at the voice of Heaven's thunder! Poor woman! It is a marvel that she also is not mad. She cannot even weep now though her bosom heaves tumultuously--it were not good for a man to know her secret thoughts at this moment. "They are calling me, they are calling me," stammers the child.... "Men without heads ... they are running after me ... the black dog is scratching up the ground ... the hand of the dead body is sticking out.... Poor Emma!" The poor lady, all trembling, rose from her seat, very softly lest she should make a noise, she gets up, she cannot blow out the night lamp on the table, her breath is too feeble for that, she puts it out by casting it out of the room. Then she approaches the window in the darkness to see whether the curtains are closely drawn, or whether anyone can look into the room from the outside. What a flashing past there was of fiery eyes amid the darkness of the night--Hah! What a blinding flash that was!--And then black darkness again.--No, nobody could see her--nobody--. Can she make up her mind? She goes slowly back to the bed. The lad is moaning fearfully. He is babbling dreadful words and his throat rattles painfully. "How blue...? her mouth ... how bloody ... her forehead ... poor little Emma." The lady bends down over the bed. The ghost of a pale little face comes into sight now and then as the lightning flashes quiver past the windows. Can she make up her mind? "Poor little Emma," wails the lad. This last pathetic wail was too much for her. The unhappy woman crossed herself three times and, in a dry, half-suffocated voice exclaimed: "Don't bury me, Neddy, little Emma won't cry!"