"What is the matter, Willie? Where are you going? What have you lost?"
"Nothing much, mother; I am only going out a minute," and he closed the door, and began an almost hopeless search by the moonlight for his lost treasure. Up and down the walk he searched without finding it. He opened the gate, and peeping and peering about, wandered up the road, until his little feet and limbs got wet in the soft snow, and his hands became benumbed; when, feeling convinced that it was lost, he sat down and burst into a passionate fit of weeping. Let no one feel surprise or contempt at this. In this little affair of the thimble there had been disinterested love, self-sacrifice, anticipated joy, disappointment and despair, though all expended on a cheap thimble. Yet, Willie was but seven years old, and "thought as a child, felt as a child, understood as a child." I am a grown-up child now, and have had many troubles, but the most acute sorrow I ever felt was the death of my pet pigeon, when I was seven years old.
It was long before the storm in his little bosom subsided, but when at last it did, he turned to go home; he would not go before, lest he might grieve his mother with the sight of his tears. At last, weary and half-frozen, he opened the cottage gate and met his mother coming to look for him, and she, who always spoke most gently to him, and for whose dear sake she was suffering, now by a sad chance, and out of her fright and vexation, sharply rebuked him and hurried him off to bed. "If dear mamma had known, she would not have scolded me so, though," was his last thought as he sank into a feverish sleep. The next morning when Mrs. Dulan arose, the heavy breathing, and bright flush upon the cheek of her boy, caught her attention, and roused her fears for his health. As she gazed, a sharp expression of pain contracted his features and he awoke. Feebly stretching out his arms to embrace her, he said:
"Oh, mamma, Willie is so sick, and his breast hurts so bad."
The child had caught the pleurisy.
It was late at night before medical assistance could be procured from a distant village. In the meantime the child's illness had fearfully progressed; and when at last the physician arrived, and examined him, he could give no hopes of his recovery. Language cannot depict the anguish of the mother as she bent over the couch of her suffering boy, and, if a grain could have increased the burden of her grief, it would have been felt in the memory of the few words of harsh rebuke when he had returned half-frozen and heavy-hearted from his fruitless search after the thimble, for the kind Elizabeth had arrived and explained the incident of the night.
It was midnight of the ninth day. Willie had lain in a stupor for a whole day and night previous. His mother stood by his bed; she neither spoke nor wept, but her face wore the expression of acute suffering. Her eyes were strained with an earnest, anxious, agonized gaze upon the deathly countenance of the boy. Old Dr. Dulan entered the room at this moment, and looking down at the child, and taking his thin, cold hand in his own, felt his pulse, and turning to the wretched mother, who had fixed her anxious gaze imploringly upon him, he said:
"Hannah, my dear sister—— But, oh, God! I cannot deceive you," and abruptly left the room.
"Elizabeth," said he to his daughter, who was sitting by the parlor fire, "go into the next room and remain with your aunt, and if anything occurs summon me at once; and, John, saddle my horse quickly, and ride over to Mrs. Caply and tell her to come over here."