"something"! A fearful, awe-struck curiosity to see what
Caroline's illness was with my own eyes troubled my inmost heart,
and I begged to be allowed to go home and help to nurse her. The
request was, it is almost needless to say, refused.

Weeks passed away, and still I heard nothing, except that my
sister continued to be ill. One day I privately wrote a letter to
Uncle George, asking him, in my childish way, to come and tell me
about Caroline's illness.

I knew where the post-office was, and slipped out in the morning
unobserved and dropped my letter in the box. I stole home again
by the garden, and climbed in at the window of a back parlor on
the ground floor. The room above was my aunt's bedchamber, and
the moment I was inside the house I heard moans and loud
convulsive sobs proceeding from it. My aunt was a singularly
quiet, composed woman. I could not imagine that the loud sobbing
and moaning came from her, and I ran down terrified into the
kitchen to ask the servants who was crying so violently in my
aunt's room.

I found the housemaid and the cook talking together in whispers
with serious faces. They started when they saw me as if I had
been a grown-up master who had caught them neglecting their work.

"He's too young to feel it much," I heard one say to the other.
"So far as he is concerned, it seems like a mercy that it
happened no later."

In a few minutes they had told me the worst. It was indeed my