away, for again that holy promise, which she had welcomed with such ecstasy, was repeated. Now her joy was mingled with strange forebodings, and depressing fears, yet they only seemed to render her yearnings more intense.
When the hour came, her illness was even more severe, her sufferings were even more protracted; but, at length, her expectant, happy ears caught the longed-for sound, the cry of an infant's voice! Very feeble, very low, and yet as distinctly heard by her as the peal of rejoicing bells by a royal mother when a Prince is born!
Amy turned to her husband with an uncontrollable burst of emotion. What was the meaning of that look of anguish? She stretched out her eager arms for the infant. Wrapped in its little woollen blanket it was, at once, laid in her bosom. Still no smile in her husband's half-averted eyes, no words of congratulation from his trembling lips. Oh! it was incomprehensible!
She heard the child's faint moans; she felt the clutch of the small fingers; the quick throbbing of the thread-like pulses; he lived! he breathed! he was hers!
The moans grow fainter and fainter, and then fade into a low, hardly audible murmur—the baby hand relaxes its hold—a strange pallor spreads over the tiny face—the lids drop heavily over the eyes! What is this? The limbs grow rigid—the
