required to be drawn together, and was applying strips of adhesive
plaster, when the hurried entrance of some one caused me to look
up. What an apparition met my eyes! A woman stood in the door,
with a face in which maternal anxiety and terror blended
fearfully. Her countenance was like ashes--her eyes straining
wildly--her lips apart, while the panting breath almost hissed
through them.

"Joe! Joe! What is it? Where is Mary? Is she dead?" were her eager
inquiries.

"No, Fanny," answered Joe Morgan, starting up from where he was
actually kneeling by the side of the reviving little one, and
going quickly to his wife. "She's better now. It's a bad hurt, but
the doctor says it's nothing dangerous. Poor, dear child!"

The pale face of the mother grew paler--she gasped--caught for
breath two or three times--a low shudder ran through her frame--
and then she lay white and pulseless in the arms of her husband.
As the doctor applied restoratives, I had opportunity to note more
particularly the appearance of Mrs. Morgan. Her person was very
slender, and her face so attenuated that it might almost be called
shadowy. Her hair, which was a rich chestnut brown, with a slight
golden lustre, had fallen from her comb, and now lay all over her
neck and bosom in beautiful luxuriance. Back from her full temples
it had been smoothed away by the hand of Morgan, that all the
while moved over her brow and temples with a caressing motion that
I saw was unconscious, and which revealed the tenderness of
feeling with which, debased as he was, he regarded the wife of his
youth, and the long suffering companion of his later and evil