THE TWIN SISTERS. 409 



demoniac expression. Terrified past speaking, they hurried away, 

 and Jane immediately left the cottage to seek assistance. The medical 

 man living in the village accompanied her back. During her ab- 

 sence, which had been very short, his groans had continued, and had 

 frightened her sister away, who was standing at the gate anxiously 

 expecting her. The gentleman immediately went forward, and after 

 an interval of a few minutes returned, saying that he was labouring 

 under the cholera. They had heard enough of this disease to make 

 its very name dreadful. He declared to them that, as they valued 

 their own existence, they must instantly leave the cottage, and that 

 he would send a person to take care of their father. Under ordinary 

 circumstances this was a recommendation they would have spurned, 

 but the fearful man and the fearful disease made them at once 

 accede to it. Without returning to the cottage, they sought a tem- 

 porary home beneath the roof of one of the villagers. Some difficulty 

 was experienced in finding a person who would attend upon Asper : 

 the terror of the disease hindered all the more respectable matrons 

 or nurses from offering their services, and a woman was engaged 

 who occasionally watched by the bedside of death amongst the 

 lowest and most destitute portion of the community. 



James Asper was thus left alone for two hours : night had 

 plunged his solitary room in darkness, while the disease in its most 

 frightful and fatal form was rapidly making destructive ravages upon 

 his iron frame. Wretched, miserable man ! what thoughts must 

 have crowded through thy seared brain when the hand of the 

 avenging angel was pressing heavily upon thee ! Did repentance for 

 thy untold crimes come over thy spirit in that dreadful hour ? Did 

 scalding tears of penitence evince thy remorse for the half-broken 

 hearts of thy children, who had drooped before thy unpitying eye 

 like lilies whose stems had been bruised by the thunder-storm ? or 

 did thy heart, clad in its armour of vice and selfishness, remain un- 

 touched by thy miserable and deserted condition ? Unheard by 

 human ears were thy groans, unheeded thy cries of agony ; and thy 

 prayers, if any were uttered by thee, were wasted upon the night air, 

 unanswered save by their own echoes. 



His nurse at last came, fit nurse for such a disease, fit nurse for 

 such a depraved man ! Stumbling up stairs, she groped around the 

 room for the bed, having neglected to furnish herself with light or 

 any means of procuring it she was intoxicated. Yielding to a 

 customary vice, under the excuse that it was necessary to keep away 

 the plague, she had spent. the gratuity which had been given to her, 

 and the time she should have passed with the sick man, in swallowing 

 deep potations of brandy, which were fast bringing on total drunken- 

 ness. The struggling and groaning of Asper had been suspended by 

 a momentary interval of ease. She came muttering up to him, and, 

 rudely seizing him, offered, in place of the medicine, a portion of her 

 own stimulant, which she had brought with her. The dying man 

 eagerly swallowed it, and his failing faculties were partially roused. 

 Pushing her hand away, which still rested on his chest, he raised 

 the idiotic anger of the inebriated woman, who poured upon him a 

 M.M. -No. 4. 3 G 



