to see things with a gloomy eye. “I wish you were going with me,” said he, “don’t cry, I shall soon be back again.” “Everything makes me cry to-night, you might not get back until the worst is over, oh, if she could be saved.” He held her face close to him and took from it his farewell kiss. “God bless you, my darling, forever.” “May he bless you Charles,” she said, with streaming eyes and for the first time in her life his kiss was returned, then they parted. CHAPTER IV. AN UNEXPECTED DEATH. Charles having reached the station, taken the train to Waterville in response to the telegram, and when he reached there taken a carriage and was driven to the residence of Marshall Bangs, he found the decaying invalid sitting on a sofa in his bed-room; he had just recovered from a fainting spell, and he had recovered only to be the more weak. He was standing on the lawn before his house talking with a friend when he suddenly fell to the ground. He did not recover consciousness until evening, and nearly the first wish he expressed was a desire to see his friend and partner, Charles Taylor. “Dispatch for him” he said to his wife. Mrs. Bangs had a horror for fevers, especially when they were confined to everybody; at the present time she considered herself out of the reach of it, and no amount of persuasion could induce her to return, but her husband had grown tired and restless and was determined to go home, but let her remain until the fever had taken its departure, hence the dispatch. On the second day he was well enough to converse with Charles on business affairs, and that over, he expressed the wish that Charles would take him home. Charles mentioned it to Mrs. Bangs; it did not meet her approbation. “You should have opposed it entirely,” she said, in a firm tone. “But why so, Mrs. Bangs, if he desires to return, I think he should.” “Not while the fever lingers there; were he to take it and die I should never forgive myself.” Charles had no fear of the fever for himself, and did not fear it for his friend; he intimated as much, “it is not the fever that will hurt him, Mrs. Bangs.” “You have no right to say that. Mrs. Brewster, a month ago, would have said that she did not fear it for Mary Ann, and now she is dying, or dead, you confess you did not think that she could last more than a day or two when you left.” “I certainly did not,” said Charles. “She looked fearfully ill and emaciated, but that has nothing to do with Mr. Bangs.” “I cannot conceive how you could be so imprudent as to venture into her sick-room,” cried Mrs. Bangs, “indeed that you went to the house at all while the fever was in it.” “There could be no risk in my going into her room, nothing is the matter with her now but debility.” “We cannot tell, Mr. Taylor, when risk ends or when it begins; had not so many hours elapsed before you came here I should feel afraid of you.” Charles smiled. But he wished he had said nothing of his visit to the