This is all that you have to learn in the room below; but as we stand there, we hear a trampling of feet in the apartment above,--the quick yet careful opening and shutting of doors,--and voices come and go about the house, and whisper consultations on the stairs. Now comes the roll of wheels, and the Doctor's gig drives up to the door; and, as he goes creaking up with his heavy boots, we will follow and gain admission to the dimly-lighted chamber. Two gossips are sitting in earnest, whispering conversation over a small bundle done up in an old flannel petticoat. To them the doctor is about to address himself cheerily, but is repelled by sundry signs and sounds which warn him not to speak. Moderating his heavy boots as well as he is able to a pace of quiet, he advances for a moment, and the petticoat is unfolded for him to glance at its contents; while a low, eager, whispered conversation, attended with much head-shaking, warns him that his first duty is with somebody behind the checked curtains of a bed in the farther corner of the room. He steps on tiptoe, and draws the curtain; and there, with closed eye, and cheek as white as wintry snow, lies the same face over which passed the shadow of death when that ill-fated ship went down. This woman was wife to him who lies below, and within the hour has been made mother to a frail little human existence, which the storm of a great anguish has driven untimely on the shores of life,--a precious pearl cast up from the past eternity upon the wet, wave-ribbed sand of the present. Now, weary with her moanings, and beaten out with the wrench of a double anguish, she lies with closed eyes in that passive apathy which precedes deeper shadows and longer rest. Over against her, on the other side of the bed, sits an aged woman in an attitude of deep dejection, and the old man we saw with her in the morning is standing with an anxious, awestruck face at the foot of the bed. The doctor feels the pulse of the woman, or rather lays an inquiring finger where the slightest thread of vital current is scarcely throbbing, and shakes his head mournfully. The touch of his hand rouses her,--her large wild, melancholy eyes fix themselves on him with an inquiring glance, then she shivers and moans,-- "Oh, Doctor, Doctor!--Jamie, Jamie!" "Come, come!" said the doctor, "cheer up, my girl, you've got a fine little daughter,--the Lord mingles mercies with his afflictions." Her eyes closed, her head moved with a mournful but decided dissent. A moment after she spoke in the sad old words of the Hebrew Scripture,-- "Call her not Naomi; call her Mara, for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me." And as she spoke, there passed over her face the sharp frost of the last winter; but even as it passed there broke out a smile, as if a flower had been thrown down from Paradise, and she said,-- "Not my will, but thy will," and so was gone. Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey were soon left alone in the chamber of death.