CHAPTER XVII.

BEFORE DAWN.

"INFLAMMATION of the lungs," the nurse had whispered.

But when the woman entered that darkened room, she was hardly prepared for the little figure she found propped up in the narrow bed, nor for the sunken cheeks and staring eyes of her once healthy boy.

Her promise of calmness and her fear of not being allowed to see him kept the woman from the first wild impulse to throw herself at his feet and devour him with kisses.

As she crossed the room to his side, she felt like some untamed animal being robbed of its offspring. But all she did was to bend over him and say with a strangled sob—

"Oh, Johnnie, are you very ill, my dear?"

After trying vainly to speak, he nodded slightly, but looked appealingly towards his nurse, and laid his head back on his high pillow.

"He will be better presently, ma'am," said the nurse, putting a chair near. "He wants to tell you something, but he has not much breath at times. He will speak when he feels able. Is not that right, dear?"

Johnnie was watching his mother's face with those pathetic eyes, in which some urgent request lay hidden. As the nurse bent over him with some medicine, he whispered—

"Shall I have time?"

"I think you will," she answered. "But if not, Johnnie, I can tell her what you have told me."

"Ah, but—"

No telling of hers, he felt, would have the weight of his own dying request. But he could not as yet gather strength to speak.

"He has been light-headed a good bit," explained the nurse, "but he is better of that now."

The woman had taken her child's hand, but he drew it away as if more than he could bear, and in a short breathless way gasped—

"I'll speak presently."

Just at this moment the door opened noiselessly, and the master of the school came in.

"We feared you would be too late," he said gravely, in a low tone, to Johnnie's mother. "Did you not receive my letter?"

"No," answered the woman briefly; "not till to-night."

Then, as if impelled by something she could not resist, she asked in an almost inaudible tone—

"Is there no hope, then?"

"I fear not."

The master turned to the bed, spoke a few kind words to the boy, and noiselessly left the room.

Still Johnnie lay with that distressed look on his face. And the nurse stood by watching him, but without saying a word to break the silence, lest in doing so she might hinder rather than help her poor little invalid.

The mother, sitting there in that unbroken silence, felt as if she could not bear the agony of it much longer.

She was just turning towards Johnnie with an appealing look, when he said in that same short, gasping way—

"I want you to take him back, mother."

The woman shrank, and the child felt it.

"I never knew how wicked it was—till now," he went on, gazing still at her averted eyes.

"You did not know," whispered his mother.

"No—no, mother—not that! But taking him away! It was awful of me to do what I did—I never knew the harm—but you will take him back now, mother."

"I don't see how I can," she said at last.

"Mother!" he urged. "'He's' got a mother."

There was a breathless pause. The nurse, standing by, feared that her little patient's life would ebb away in the agony of that ungranted request.

"I'm going to Jesus," whispered Johnnie again, in a broken voice. "He's forgiven me that, and all my other sins—every sin. He has washed me clean and white. But, mother, you must give him back, indeed you must."

"She will," interposed the nurse soothingly, "when she has had time to think of it! Just tell him that you will, if you can, ma'am!"

With a warning glance she went to the fire for some broth, while the woman, urged by her look and by the beseeching, dying agony of her child's eyes, said slowly—

"I will—Johnnie—I will."

Then realizing what she had done, she buried her face in her hands, and trembled from head to foot.

Johnnie's hand, which had lain listlessly on the counterpane, sought his mother's now, and pressed it with what little strength he had, and he drew her towards him.

"Kiss me, mother," he said.

After that, though he took what the nurse gave him, he did not seem able to speak. His eyes never closed, but were generally fixed on his mother's face with an expression the nurse did not understand.

The hours crept on; sometimes his mother said a word of tender endearment, sometimes only her suppressed weeping broke the stillness.

The daylight was beginning to creep in when he spoke once more.

"Mother, you will come to Jesus too?"

"Oh, Johnnie, I'll do what you ask me about the other. But don't make me promise what I can't do, my dear!"

"Ah, but you can," he panted. "Nurse told me the words—they make it so plain—'Him that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out!' Can't you come after that, mother?"

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