The blacksmith himself was making progress—the best parts of him were growing fast. Age was turning the strength into channels and mill-streams, which before, wild-foaming, had flooded the meadows.

— Forty-Five —

Wylder Hall

Barbara’s brother, her father’s twin, was fast following her mother’s to that somewhere each of us must learn for himself, and no one can learn from another. While they were in London, he was in the Isle of Wight with his tutor. His mother and sister had several times gone to see him, but he did not show much pleasure in their attentions, and was certainly happier with his tutor than with anyone else.

Disease, however, was making straight the path of Love. Now they were all at home at Wylder Hall, and Death was on his way to join them. Love, however, was watching, ready to wrest from him his sting—without which he is no more Death, but Sleep.

As the poor fellow grew weaker, his tutor became less able to console him, and he could not look to his mother for the tenderness he had seen her lavish on his brother. But the love of his sister had always leaned toward him, ready, on the least opening of the door of his heart, to show itself in the chink. At last the opportunity of being to him and doing for him what she could arrived.

One day on the lawn he tripped and fell. The strong little Barbara took him in her arms and carried him to his room. When two drops of water touch, the mere contact is not of long duration. So the hearts of the sister and the dying brother rushed into each other. After this they were seldom apart. A new life had waked in the very heart of death and grew and spread through the being of the boy. His eye became brighter, not with fever only, but with love and contentment and hope, for Barbara made him feel that nothing could part them, that they had been born into the world for the hour when they should find one another.

He would come creeping up to her as she worked or read and sit on a stool at her feet, asking for nothing, wishing for nothing, content to be near her. But Barbara’s book or work was soon laid aside. He was bigger than she, but the muscles of the little maiden were like springs of steel, informed with the tenderest, strongest heart in all the county, and presently he would find himself lifted to her lap, his head on her shoulder, the sweetest voice in all the world whispering lovely secrets in his willing ear, her face bent over him with the stoop of heaven over the patient weary earth.

In her arms his poor wasting body forgot its restlessness. The fever that irritated every nerve, burning away the dust of the world, seemed to pause and let him grow a little cool, and the sleep that sometimes came to him there was sweet as death. The face that had so long looked peevish, wore now a waiting look. In heaven, every one sheltered the other, and the arms of God were round them all!