At the foot of the stairs, however, he checked himself, creeping up as silently and cautiously as possible, and stopping at the head to listen for the clear voice, frightfully clear and shrill, of the delirious child, which usually met him there.  No sound was to be heard except the deep voice of the Italian organ-grinder in the room below, talking to himself or his monkey as he prepared supper; and Teddy, creeping along the entry to his mother’s door, softly opened it, and went in.

At one side of the bed stood Mrs. Ginniss; at the other, Dr. Wentworth:  but Teddy saw only the little waxen face upon the pillow between them,—­the little face so strange and lovely now; for all the fever flush had passed away, the babbling lips were folded white and still, the glittering eyes were closed, and the long dark lashes lay motionless upon the cheek,—­the little face so strange and terrible in its sudden, peaceful beauty.

As Teddy softly entered, Dr. Wentworth turned and held a warning finger up; then bent again above the little child, his hand upon her heart.

The boy crept close to his mother, down whose honest face the tears ran like rain; although she heeded the earnest warning of the physician, and was almost as still as she little form she watched.

“Is she dead, mother?” whispered Teddy.

“Whisht, darlint! wait till we know,” whispered she in return; and the young doctor glanced impatiently at both out of his strained and eager eyes.  Had it been his own and only child, he could not have hung more earnestly about her:  and here was the strange, sweet charm of this little life,—­that all who came within its influence felt themselves drawn toward it, and opened wide their hearts to allow its entrance; feeling not alone that they loved the lovely child, but that she was or should be their very own, to cherish and fondle and bind to them forever.

So the coarse, hard-working woman, who two weeks before had never seen her face, now wept as true and bitter tears as she had done beside the death-bed of the child she had lost when Teddy was a baby; and the young doctor, who had watched the passage of a hundred souls from time to eternity, hung over this little dying form as if all life for him were held within it, and to lose it were to lose all.  And Teddy-ah! poor Teddy; for upon his young heart lay not only the bitterness of the death busy with his “little sister’s” life, but the heavy burden of wrong and deception, and the proof, as he thought, of God’s displeasure in taking from him at last what he had tried so hard to keep.

He sank upon his knees beside the bed, and hid his face, whispering,—­

“O God! let her live, and I will give her back to them as I kept her from.”

Over and over and over again, he whispered just these words, clinching tight his boy-hands to keep down the agony of the sacrifice; while in the very centre of his heart throbbed a hard, dull pain, that seemed as if it would rend it asunder.