Once or
twice during the progress of this conversation I had tried to lift my
voice, my hand--both were alike powerless. I lay bound, for a while, in
a cataleptic reverie, and then I passed away once more into darkness and
syncope.
It was evening when I revived--Dr. Pemberton was sitting beside me,
holding my pulse--Mrs. Austin and Mabel were at the bedside. This was,
at last, the end I craved; of all, I hoped.
"The wine, Mrs. Austin," the doctor said, in low accents.
"Quick! one spoonful instantly. You know how it was before--you were too
slow; she fell back before she could swallow it.--Now another, Miriam.
Say, are you better?"
Most anxiously as my eyes opened and were fixed upon his face, were
these words spoken:
"No, dying, I believe--at least, I hope so!"
The shrieks of the child aroused me to a sense of what I owed myself and
her. "You shall not die, sister Miriam," she cried. "Papa does not want
you--I want you--I will not stay with Evelyn and Claude--I will go down
in the ground too, if you die. My sister, you shall not go to God! I
will hold you tight, if He comes for you. He shall not have my
Miriam--nor His angels either."
Her cries did for me what medicine had failed to do. They tried in vain
to silence her. My pulse returned under the stimulus of emotion. I put
out my hand blindly to Mabel.
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