Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/120

110 I laid the child upon the sofa, while the girl ran for a doctor. I stood as though stunned until he came, watching him then in a dream as he examined the soft limbs of the poor babe, and he shook his head as he arose.

"I am sorry to have to tell you that if she lives she will be a cripple all her life."

"Tell my mother," I whispered. I was not the one to tell her this.

"I am sorry," he said; "I am very sorry, Madam."

"Hush!" the old woman answered; "hush! You will waken her."

"She may never waken," he whispered "Bear up, dear Madam."

"Hush!" the old woman said again, touching the golden curls that were stained with blood. "Hush! The fairies have come to her and laid red poppies in her hair."

And thus had I fulfilled my trust to care for his mother and child—one a cripple or dead, the other a muttering idiot.

I had launched my new life, and the waters that bore it were red human blood; but who or what was the dread pilot that guided it?