‘The upper skies are palest blue, Mottled with pearl and fretted snow; With tattered fleece of inky hue, Close overhead the storm-clouds go. ‘Their shadows fly along the hills, And o’er the crest mount one by one; The whitened planking of the mill Is now in shade and now in sun.’ It is as yet a young winter, just freshly born, and full of the terrible vitality that belongs to infancy. Sharp are the little darting breezes, and merry blow the blinding showers of snow, still so light and fragile, laughed at by the children, and caught in their little upturned hands, but still sure forerunners of the bitter days to come, when the baby winter shall be a man full grown, and bad to wrestle with. To these days, so cold and pitiless to the fragile creatures of the earth, little Bonnie has succumbed. Into his aching limbs the frosts have entered, racking the tender little body, and bringing it to so low an ebb that Susan, watching over him with miserable fear and terrible forebodings from morning till night, and from night again to morning (she never now lets him out of her sight, refusing even to let anyone else sleep with him), lives in secret, awful terror of what every day may bring. Cuddled into her young warm arms at night, she clasps him tightly to her, feeling he cannot be taken from her whilst thus she holds him, whilst still she can feel him—feel his little beloved form, now, alas! mere bones, with their sad covering, that seems to be of skin only. And to her Father in heaven she prays, not only nightly, when he is in her arms, but at intervals when she is on her strong young feet, that he will spare her this one awful grief—the death of her pretty boy. No mother ever prayed harder, entreated more wildly (yet always so silently), for the life of her offspring than Susan prays for the continuance of this small life. For the last week he has been very bad, in great and incessant pain; and Susan, abandoning all other duties, has given herself up to him. No one has reprimanded her for this giving up of her daily work, though the household is suffering much through lack of her many customary ministrations. Even Miss Barry has forgotten to scold, and goes very silently about the house; whilst the Rector’s face has taken a heart-broken expression—the look it used to wear, as the elder children so well remember, after their mother’s death.