Ten days after the above conversation, the eventful period came. All night she lingered in pain, and at daybreak a bright and beautiful daughter was laid at her side. But, alas! life here was not for her. Mother and babe were about to be separated, for the fast receding pulse told plainly to the watchful physician that her days were numbered. Her anguished husband read it in the hopeless features of the doctor, and leaning over the dear one he loved so well, he caught from her these last words,—
“Call her DAWN! for is she not a coming light to you? See, the day is breaking, Hugh,”—then the lips closed forever.
“Come back, come back to me, my loved, my darling one,” broke from the anguished heart of the stricken husband, and falling on his knees beside the now lifeless form, he buried his face in his hands, and wept.
But even grief cannot always have its sway.
A low, wailing cry from the infant moved his heart with a strange thrill, he knew not whether of joy or pain, and rising from the posture in which grief had thrown him, he went and bowed himself over the silent form.
One gone, another come.
But the little being had her life in its veins, and slowly he felt himself drawn earthward by this new claim upon his love and sympathy.
A strange feeling came over him as the nurse took the little child, and laid upon the bed the robes its mother had prepared for it.
It was too much, and the heart-stricken man left the room, and locking himself in his library, where he had spent so many happy hours with his lost one, gave full vent to the deep anguish of his soul. He heard the kind physician's steps as he left, and no more. For hours he sat bowed in grief, and silent, while sorrow's bitter waters surged over him.
No more would her sweet smile light his home; no more her voice call his name in those tender tones, that had so often been music to his ears; no more could they walk or sit in the moonlight and converse. Was it really true? Had Alice gone, or was it not all a troubled dream?