University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
DORA AND HER MOTHER.

Poor little Dora Deane! How utterly wretched and
desolate she was, as she crouched before the scanty fire,
and tried to warm the little bit of worn-out flannel, with
which to wrap her mother's feet; and how hard she tried to
force back the tears which would burst forth afresh whenever
she looked upon that pale, sick mother, and thought
how soon she would be gone!

It was a small, low, scantily furnished room, high up in
the third story of a crazy old building, which Dora called
her home, and its one small window looked out on naught
save the roofs and spires of the great city whose dull, monotonous
roar was almost the only sound to which she had
ever listened. Of the country, with its bright green grass,
its sweet wild flowers, its running brooks, and its shady
trees, she knew but little, for only once had she looked
on all these things, and then her heart was very sad, for the

bright green grass was broken, and the sweet wild flowers
were trampled down, that a grave might be made in the
dark, moist earth for her father, who had died in early manhood,
leaving his wife and only child to battle with the selfish
world as best they could. Since that time, life had been
long and dreary to the poor widow, whose hours were well-nigh
ended, for ere to-morrow's sun was risen, she would
have a better home than that dreary, cheerless room, while
Dora, at the early age of twelve, would be an orphan.

It was a cold December night, the last one of the year,
and the wintry wind, which swept howling past the curtainless
window, seemed to take a sadder tone, as if in pity for
the little girl who knelt upon the hearthstone, and with the
dim firelight flickering over her tear-stained face, prayed
that she, too, might die, and not be left alone.

“It will be so lonely—so cold without my mother!” she
murmured. “Oh, let me go with her; I cannot live alone.”

“Dora, my darling,” came faintly from the rude couch,
and in an instant the child was at her mother's side.

Winding her arms fondly about the neck of her daughter,
and pushing the soft auburn hair from off her fair, open
brow, Mrs. Deane gazed long and earnestly upon her face.

“Yes, you are like me,” she said at last, “and I am glad
that it is so, for it may be Sarah will love you better when
she sees in you a look like one who once called her sister.
And should he ever return”—

She paused, while her mind went back to the years long
ago—to the old yellow farm-house among the New England
hills—to the grey-haired man, who had adopted her as his
own when she was written fatherless—to the dark-eyed girl,
sometimes kind, and sometimes overbearing, whom she had
called her sister, though there was no tie of blood between
them. Then she thought of the red house just across the

way, and of the three brothers, Nathaniel, Richard, and
John. Very softly she repeated the name of the latter,
seeming to see him again as he was on the day when, with
the wreath of white apple blossoms upon her brow, she sat
on the mossy bank and listened to his low spoken words of
love. Again she was out in the pale starlight, and heard
the autumn wind go moaning through the locust trees as
Nathaniel, the strange, eccentric, woman-hating Nathaniel,
but just returned from the seas, told her how madly he had
loved her, and how the knowledge that she belonged to
another would drive him from his fatherland forever—that
in the burning clime of India he would make gold his idol,
forgetting, if it were possible, the mother who had borne
him! Then she recalled the angry scorn with which her
adopted sister had received the news of her engagement
with John, and how the conviction was at last forced upon
her that Sarah herself had loved him in secret, and that in
a fit of desperation she had given her hand to the rather
inefficient Richard, ever after treating her rival with a cool
reserve, which now came back to her with painful distinctness.

“But she will love my little Dora for John's sake, if not
for mine,” she thought, at last; and then, as if she had all
the time been speaking to her daughter, she continued,
“And you must be very dutiful to your aunt, and kind to
your cousins, fulfilling their slightest wishes.”

Looking up quickly, Dora asked, “Have you written to
Aunt Sarah? Does she say I can come?”

“The letter is written, and Mrs. Gannis will send it as
soon as I am dead,” answered Mrs. Deane. “I am sure she
will give you a home. I told her there was no alternative
but the almshouse;” then, after a pause, she added: “I
wrote to your uncle Nathaniel some months ago, when I

knew that I must die. It is time for his reply, but I bade
him direct to Sarah, as I did not then think to see the
winter snow.”

“Did you tell him of me?” eagerly asked Dora, on whom
the name of Uncle Nathaniel, or “Uncle Nat,” as he was
more familiarly called, produced a more pleasant impression
than did that of her aunt Sarah.

“Yes,” answered the mother, “it was of you that I
wrote, commending you to his care, should he return to
America. And if you ever meet him, Dora, tell him that
on my dying bed I thought of him with affection—that my
mind wandered back to the years of long ago, when I was
young, and ask him, for the sake of one he called his brother,
and for her who grieves that ever she caused him a
moment's pain, to care for you, their orphan child.”

Then followed many words of love, which were very
precious to Dora in the weary years which followed that sad
night; and then, for a time, there was silence in that little
room, broken only by the sound of the wailing tempest.
The old year was going out on the wings of a fearful storm,
and as the driving sleet beat against the casement, while
the drifting snow found entrance through more than one
wide crevice and fell upon her pillow, the dying woman
murmured, “Lie up closer to me, Dora, I am growing very
cold.”

Alas! 'twas the chill of death; but Dora did not know
it, and again on the hearthstone before the fast dying coals
she knelt, trying to warm the bit of flannel, on which her
burning tears fell like rain, when through the empty wood-box
she sought in vain for chip or bark with which to
increase the scanty fire.

“But I will not tell her,” she softly whispered, when satisfied
that her search was vain, and wrapping the flannel

around the icy feet, she untied the long-sleeved apron which
covered her own naked arms, and laying it over her
mother's shoulders, tucked in the thin bedclothes; and then,
herself all shivering and benumbed, she sat down to wait
and watch, singing softly a familiar hymn, which had sometimes
lulled her mother into a quiet sleep.

At last, as her little round white arms grew purple
with the cold, she moved nearer to the bedside, and winding
them lovingly around her mother's neck, laid her head upon
the pillow and fell asleep. And to the angels, who were
hovering near, waiting to bear their sister spirit home, there
was given charge concerning the little girl, so that she did
not freeze, though she sat there the live-long night, calmly
sleeping the sweet sleep of childhood, while the mother at
her side slept the long, eternal sleep of death!