"That I may soon go—where dear another has gone," murmured Amy, folding her thin little hands, and again glancing up at the sky.
May, child as she was, was startled at the words and the look; for the first time it flashed across her mind that her sister must be very ill.
"You must not go—you shall not go—we can't spare you—we can't do without you!" cried May, throwing her arms around her sister, as though to imprison her in their tight, loving embrace.
One thought possessed the mind of the little rustic for all the rest of that day, how could she make Amy well? The child was chidden by her father for being hours absent from the wood-shed, "after some mischief," as he said, when poor May had only been employing her clumsy fingers in stitching up her own pinafore into a pillow-case, and tearing up paper to stuff it, so that Amy's languid head—that head which so often was aching—might have a cushion to rest on. It was with great triumph that May carried her pillow to Amy in the evening; to have made it all by herself was a feat, to have invented it was an effort of genius, and the child thought that her cushion must work a wonderful charm on her suffering sister.
"Is it not nice—does it not make you feel so comfy?" asked May, as she placed her somewhat flat and limp paper cushion over the back of the wooden chair upon which Amy was seated.
"It is very nice, very comfy, I shall prize it so dearly, for it is stuffed with love," replied the sick girl, with a faint but pleasant smile.
[CHAPTER II.]
Treasure Found.
ON a bright sunny morning in the beginning of April, Silas Mytton harnessed his donkey to the cart, and led it to the shed, where he and his two younger sons loaded the cart with the bundles of wood on the sale of which their livelihood depended. The air was mild; Amy's chair was dragged by May to the doorway, where the sunbeams came streaming in; and there the little invalid sat watching her father and her brothers, Joe, the elder of the two boys, standing in the cart to receive the bundles that were tossed up to him, and pile the firewood in something like order. It was always with goodwill that the boys helped to load the wood-cart, for on the days when it went to the town, the noise of chopping was silenced, and the axe and knife might lie still on the block in the shed.
"Hard work they've cost us, and little enough they'll bring us!" muttered Mytton, as the last bundle was put on the top of the rest. He gave a blow with his stick to the patient donkey to make it move on, and slowly the wood-cart creaked along the rough road across the common, Silas Mytton walking beside it.