Alas! one little circumstance too painfully
assured me that this event had not been a happy one. Had Agnes been
restored to her liberty and her home, where would she have been found
but watching at my bed-side? That too certainly I knew, and the
inference was too bitter to support.
On this same day, some hours afterwards, upon Hannah's return from the
city, I received from her, and heard with perfect calmness, the whole
sum of evil which awaited me. Little Francis--she took up her tale at
that point--'was with God:' so she expressed herself. He had died of
the same fever which had attacked me--had died and been buried nearly
five weeks before. Too probably he had caught the infection from me.
Almost--such are the caprices of human feeling--almost I could have
rejoiced that this young memorial of my vanished happiness had vanished
also. It gave me a pang, nevertheless, that the grave should thus have
closed upon him before I had seen his fair little face again. But I
steeled my heart to hear worse things than this. Next she went on to
inform me that already, on the first or second day of our calamity, she
had taken upon herself, without waiting for authority, on observing the
rapid approaches of illness in me, and arguing the state of
helplessness which would follow, to write off at once a summons in the
most urgent terms to the brother of my wife.
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