The restlessness of fever was followed by a spell of utter exhaustion, but the delirious murmurs ceased, and a light of consciousness came into those large, lustrous eyes, by which Mary knew this was indeed her son.
Otherwise, what a change from the rosy, happy child of seven, full of life and vigour, to the emaciated boy of twelve, whose face was prematurely old, and, unshaded by the once abundant hair, which had been close cropped to his head, looked ghostly and unfamiliar.
Still, he was hers once more, and she took off the ragged black gown, which had been the uniform of the scholars of the Jesuit school, and was now only fit for the fire, and taking off her own cloak, she wrapped him in it, bathed his face with water, put the herb cordial to his lips, and then, setting herself on an old chair, the only furniture in the tumbledown attic, she raised Ambrose on her knees, and, whispering loving words and prayers over him, hungered for a sign of recognition.
Evidently the poor boy's weary brain was awakened by some magnetic power to a consciousness that some lost clue of his happy childhood had been restored to him.
As his head lay against his mother's breast the rest there was apparently sweet.
He sighed as if contented, closed his eyes and slept.
Mary dare not move or scarcely breathe, lest she should disturb the slumber in which, as she gazed upon his face, the features of her lost child seemed to come out with more certain likeness to her Ambrose of past years.
For a smile played round the scarlet lips, and the long, dark fringe of the lashes resting on his cheeks, brought back the many times in the old home when she had seen them shadow the rounded rosy cheeks of his infant days.
A mother's love knows no weariness, and, as the hours passed and Ambrose still slept, Mary forgot her aching back and arms, her forlorn position in that desolate attic, even the painful ordeal she had gone through by her husband's dying bed—forgot everything but the joy that, whether for life or death, her boy was restored to her.
At last Ambrose stirred, and the smile faded from his lips. He raised his head and gazed up into the face bending over him.