Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/299



CHAPTER XIX.

WAITING FOR DEATH.

"How much the heart may bear, and yet not break! How much the flesh may suffer, and not die! I question much if any pain or ache,  Of soul or body, brings our end more nigh. Though we are sick, and tired, and faint, and worn—        Lo! all things can be borne."

And poor Alice lay ill for weeks, hovering long between life and death, and all unconscious of the bitter woe that was awaiting her tardy recovery—a woe so vast that even her loving attendants, having had to pass through the same terrible experience themselves, almost hoped she might never awaken to the consciousness of it, but find her grandmother in a better world, without the agony of the parting in this.

But youth is strong, and Alice had a good constitution, and she rallied at last; but oh!