Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/277

 her grandmother's tender care and loving sympathy, forgot she had so lately doubted them; and poor Elsie, hanging over her in soothing ministrations, with a perpetual prayer in her heart, remembered only her darling's present danger, and forgot she had ever been less than dutiful.

Mistress Campbell was well skilled in all the homely curative lore upon which, in the olden days, experience relied. She knew the health-giving properties hidden in herbs and roots and barks—the simple remedies drawn from Nature's own laboratory—and which, if possibly less potent for good, were far more harmless than the drugs of our modern pharmacists; and so, through the long, uncounted hours of the bright, hot summer's day—through the slow-moving watches of the sultry summer night—the patient watcher kept her weary place by the sick-*bed, with tireless ministry, and tender, soothing words; and by her skill and love seemed to hold even the "king of terrors" at bay, and actually to ward off the impending danger. It was a fearful contest, for life or death, and often poor Mistress Campbell's heart sank