"Bring water, bring brandy; mother will give it to you," she said to him in a low voice, and he dashed off to obey. Mrs. Arnold hastily descended from the carriage and felt her son's pulse with much solicitude. "He has only fainted," she said. "He is apt to have such attacks when overwrought. It's a part of his disease. Miss Jocelyn, you see he is a reed that must be supported, not leaned upon," she added, looking straight into the young girl's troubled eyes. "I mean you kindness as truly as I mean kindness to him. He will soon be better. He has often been in this condition ever since he was a child. With this knowledge you will understand me better. Thomas"--to the coach-man--"lift him into the carriage. He will soon revive," she continued to Mildred, "and at the hotel he shall have the best of care. Believe me, I feel for you both, but I know what is right and best." The coachman did as he was directed, and they drove rapidly away. Mildred put her hand to her side, and then, with pale and downcast face, led the wondering children toward the house. She soon met. Roger returning, and running like a deer. "They have taken him away," she said briefly, without looking up. "Please care for his horse and accept my thanks," and then she hastened to her room and did not appear again that day. He complied with her request, then went back to his work, and the grain fell as if the reaper were Death himself. Mrs. Arnold's course was not so harsh and rude as it seemed, and can readily be explained on the theory by which she governed her feelings and actions toward her son. An obscure weakness in the functions of his heart had rendered him subject to fainting turns from early childhood. Physicians had always cautioned against over-exertion and over-excitement of any kind; therefore he had not been sent to school like the other children, or permitted to indulge in the sports natural to his age. Having been constantly cautioned, curbed, and repressed, he grew into a timid, self-distrustful, irresolute man, and yet was keenly sensible of the defects that separated him from other men. No one ever longed for independence more earnestly than he; few were less able to achieve it. His mother, having shielded him so many years from himself as well as from adverse influences from without, had formed the habit of surveillance. Exaggerating his weakness and dependence, his unfitness to compete with other men in active pursuits, she had almost ignored his manhood. The rest of the family naturally took their tone from her, regarding him as an invalid, and treating him as one. Chafing with secret and increasing bitterness over his misfortune and anomalous position, he grew more and more silent and reserved, dwelling apart in a world created from a literature that was not of the best or most wholesome character. As long as he lived a quiet, monotonous life that accorded with the caution enjoined by physicians, he gave his mother little solicitude, for the woman