“This weather certainly tries the strongest,” said Miss Patch, with a sigh.  “We will hope for the best, dear.  We all of us have our bad days, don’t we?  Charlie may be much better to-morrow; we must try to keep his spirits up, and make him as cheerful and happy as we can.”  But Jessie, as she went down the stairs again, wondered how that would be possible when she herself felt so far from being either.

Christmas came and went, and the spring came, but without bringing to Charlie the strength and health that Jessie prayed for so earnestly for him.  He never again went up to Miss Patch’s room to Sunday-school, so Miss Patch came down to him, and read or sang to him, just as he wished.  They had no lessons now, for he could not bear even that slight strain, and, as Miss Patch said, with tears trickling down her worn cheeks—­

“What good is my teaching now?  He will soon know more than any of us.  We can only help and strengthen him for the last hard steps of his journey.”  And Tom Salter, to whom she spoke, said huskily—­

“You’d be a help to anybody, miss; don’t ’ee give way now, don’t ’ee give way,” and all the time he was wiping the back of his hand across his own wet eyes. “’Tisn’t his journey that’ll be the hardest and stormiest, I’m thinking,” added Tom, “’tis those he’ll leave behind.  Who is going to break it to his mother?  She doesn’t seem to see it for herself—­though how she can help it is past my understanding.”

Poor Miss Patch’s hands shook, and her tears fell faster.  “I can’t, I can’t,” she murmured, “but yet—­I suppose I ought—­there’s nobody else to do it.”

It was Charlie himself, though, who saved her that pain.  “Mother,” he said one evening, when she came to get him ready for the night, “would you be very unhappy if I went away from you?”

“What do you mean?” she cried, in sudden fear.  “You—­you—­”

“Would you, mother?” he persisted.

“Be unhappy!  Why, I should break my heart—­you are all I have to care for, or live for, or—­”

He put his little wasted arm about her neck, and drew her frightened face down to his.  “Mother, when I go away you will know I am happy—­ but Jessie has gone away from her poor old granp and granny, and they don’t know—­they think she is very unhappy and badly treated, and—­ and, mother, I want you to try and get father to let Jessie go back to them again, they must be so dreadfully sad about her.  I often think about them—­I can’t help it—­and it makes me feel so sad.”  He was silent for a moment.  “I wish I could see them,” he added dreamily, “that I could tell them how I love her, and how kind she has been to me, and—­and that she isn’t so very unhappy.”

Mrs. Lang had stood staring down at him speechless, stricken suddenly numb and dumb with an awful overwhelming terror.

“Charlie—­you—­you ain’t feeling ill—­worse—­are you?  What’s the matter, dear?  Why do you talk so?  What do you mean by ’when you go away’?” Her lips could scarcely form the last words, for she knew as well as he could tell her.  It had come suddenly to her understanding that he was going a long, long journey—­and soon; the last journey, from which there was no returning.