At length, nature gave way.

One morning she was so sick that she could not rise.

Her head throbbed with a dizzy, blinding pain--her whole body ached, and her skin burned with fever.

Hiram got something for the children to eat, and then taking the youngest, a little girl about two years old, into the house of a neighbor, who had showed them some good-will, asked her if she would take care of his sister until he returned home at dinner time.

This the neighbor readily consented to do--promising, also, to call in frequently and see his mother.
At dinner-time, Hiram found his mother quite ill.