“‘Mother! mother!’ cried William, in tones that filled my heart with joy; and then, repeating the words of Eva Meredith—those words which she had so truly said he would find at the bottom of his heart—the child exclaimed aloud,
“‘I am dying, my son. Your father is dead; you are alone upon the earth; you must pray to the Lord!’
“I pressed gently with my hand upon William’s shoulder; he obeyed the impulse, knelt down, joined his trembling hands—this time it was of his own accord—and, raising to heaven a look full of life and feeling: ‘My God! have pity on me!’ he murmured.
“I took Eva’s cold hand. ‘Oh mother! mother of many sorrows!’ I exclaimed, ‘can you hear your child? do you behold him from above? Be happy! your son is saved!’
“Dead at Lady Mary’s feet, Eva made her rival tremble; for it was not I who led William from the room, it was Lord James Kysington who carried out his grandson in his arms.
“I have little to add, ladies. William recovered his reason and departed with Lord James. Reinstated in his rights, he was subsequently his grandfather’s sole heir. Science has recorded a few rare instances of intelligence revived by a violent moral shock. Thus does the fact I have related find a natural explanation. But the simple women of the village, who had attended Eva Meredith during her illness, and had heard her fervent prayers, were convinced that, even as she had asked of Heaven, the soul of the mother had passed into the body of the child.
“‘She was so good,’ said they, ‘that God could refuse her nothing.’ This artless belief took firm root in the country. No one mourned Mrs Meredith as dead.
“‘She still lives,’ said the people of the hamlet: ‘speak to her son, and she will answer you.’
“And when Lord William Kysington, in possession of his grandfather’s property, sent each year abundant alms to the village that had witnessed his birth and his mother’s death, the poor folks exclaimed—‘There is Mrs Meredith’s kind soul thinking of us still! Ah, when she goes to heaven, it will be great pity for poor people!’
“We do not strew flowers upon her tomb, but upon the steps of the altar of the Virgin, where she so often prayed to Mary to send a soul to her son. When bearing thither their wreaths of wild blossoms, the villagers say to each other—‘When she prayed so fervently, the good Virgin answered her softly: “I will give thy soul to thy child!”’