Her husband and her children were in bed; he had his long hard day’s work to perform on the morrow, and rest was essential to him. The little colony of children were better where they were than anywhere else; Mrs. Bantom, too, had her share of hard work cut out for her for the next day and required sleep, but she did not heed it. She thought only of the poor young creature who she believed to be rapidly quitting her brief earthly career for one that would have no limit. By the feeble rays of the miserable rushlight burning, she watched the flushed face of Lotte, perceiving it become each minute more crimson and inflamed-She saw her bosom heave and fall, and she listened with a beating heart to her stertorous breathing. She saw her head roll from side to side, her burning hands open and shut, and clutch at the bed-clothes. She heard with an aching heart the low moan of pain which oozed as it were with prolonged mournful cadence from the lips of the poor girl, and she prepared for the sudden and violent awakening to which the doctor had alluded. But Lotte became silent and motionless again; the only change in her was, that her tongue, white and rigid, protruded from her half-opened mouth. The heart of good Mrs. Bantom smote her as she observed it, and she feared that the fatal moment was indeed at hand. She, however, performed her duty as a nurse with watchful perseverance, and with some grapes which the doctor had brought, she moistened the dry and parched tongue of poor Lotte. This gentle attention, persevered in, passed not unrewarded. She could see it had a grateful influence; though, as it seemed to her, Lotte was dying in an unconscious state, and would breathe her last without making any sign. So, though she knew only the prayers taught to her in childhood, and seldom now-a-days went to a place of worship, she remembered the words of the doctor, and she knelt down by the bedside. She was unacquainted with the subtleties of contending faiths. She had a faith which went deeper: she believed implicitly in the supreme power of God, in His ability to give and to take away. In that spirit she appealed to Him. She prayed to Him, in earnest sincerity, to grant to the motionless, friendless girl, stretched on the bed before her, a longer term, if that, by a more extended sojourn on earth, she might know a greater happiness than had, perhaps, yet been her lot; but that, if it was the Divine will to remove her hence, she implored Him with earnest heart, though with all humility and reverence, to take her to His bosom, that the shadow of sorrow or affliction might fall upon her never more. When her prayer was ended, she turned her eyes, suffused with tears, upon her unconscious patient. She started. The hectic crimson of the girl’s cheek had paled down, and was fast changing to a pallid hue. It seemed even that on her brow a moisture had appeared. The heavy breathing had abated, as had the moaning and uneasy movement of head and hands.