66

"Do you perceive," continued he, any change

in my eyes?"

“No,—yes, I do see a change, but I don't exactly know what it is," returned Rosa.

"I can no longer see."

"My father!—are you blind? Oh, my God, my God!"

"Blind, or nearly so," returned he. "I can still distinguish the light; but darkness increases with me more and more, darkness-outer and inner The night will soon come in which

darkness!

no man can work."

Professor Norrby again seated himself, as if from a sense of weakness. He was pale almost as one

about to die.

'Oh, my father!" said Rosa, as she bathed his hands with her tears, "why have you concealed this from me? Why have you kept me so far from you all this time, when I ought to have been with you?"

"Should I darken your day with my night, drag your young life into my death? Selfish parents might do so; but I could not. I could not have

M

been happy to do so. I should have felt my misfortune in a twofold degree if it had fallen on you. And for that reason, you must leave me again, my daughter!"

"I?-Never! Don't ask it from me, my father. For the first time you will find me disobedient, if you do."

"You are a good daughter, my Rosa, and I did not expect less from you. But I know my duty!Thanks for this moment, my child; it has done me good, and will help me to bear that which must come. Go now, my child. It is necessary for me to be alone. Go to your aunt and your cousins, and your poor brother, they will all be glad to see

you. Poor Algott; I have not been kind to him. Talk with him, and comfort him. In the evening you shall come to me as usual."

A DARK ROOM-" THAT WHICH MUST
COME."

66

THAT which must come!"

These words sounded incessantly in Rosa's mind during the remainder of the day, as well as the tone in which her father had uttered them. A secret shudder, like a presentiment of death and the grave, passed with them through her soul. Many feelings and thoughts, not wholly painful, occupied her for the remainder of the day. Everybody in he house welcomed her as the messenger of comfort and hope. Algott's joy at again seeing her, was almost beyond bounds; he kissed her eyes, her hands and hair; he could hardly contain himself for joy; and she talked with him calmly and consolingly, as her father had desired her. But she herself wept in so doing. The

state in which she found her father affected her

deeply.

Mrs. Carlander gave her the following infor

mation:

"Very soon after you left home, last autumn, a change was perceptible in him, and I then remarked, that he was suffering again from the same shortness of breath which affected him immediately after your mother's death, and which continued. for certainly two or three years. Neither would he talk about the state of his health, and he forbade us to mention it to you in our letters, because, said he, 'it will soon pass over.' But he grew daily more silent and paler, and I had my own thoughts; so I untied my tongue and told him plainly, that I should write to you, if he would not make use of my cure for the asthma. He then consented and took it, and was so much better, that by the new year, I thought he was as well as usual. And so it all went on until towards Easter. But then, one morning, when they took him in his coffee, they found him sitting in his arm-chair, rigid and lifeless, like a statue;

he could neither move nor speak. I sent off to the doctor, who came and bled and cupped him, and he soon regained the use of his limbs. And the first use that he made of his recovered power of speech, was strictly to forbid any of us to write a word to you about this circumstance, which, he said, was then past and done with. But I understood plain enough, that he had had an apoplectic stroke, and that the consequences of it would not so easily pass away, and I was right; so much the worse for us all! For, although he appeared almost the same as formerly within a few days after the attack, yet ever since then he has gradually become worse and worse. He grew every day more silent and gloomy, and lost his appetite entirely, nor could I, let me beseech as I would, prevail upon him to try my head cure for the stomach; because if a person eats nothing, it is plain enough that they cannot live long. And the worst of it is, that I believe he will not live long. I have seen him more than once, sit and gaze gloomily before him, and heard him say to himself, 'Hm! that I should