Mr.Clement remembered to have seen the boy whom she supported, not long before playing about the cottage, his rosy cheeks heightened into a glow of health and beauty by the exercise, and his fair, thick-clustered hair blown about by the breeze.

The child was dying, and the tender power of a mother's love prompted her to keep him as near her breaking heart as she could, during the short space that remained of his brief existence.

When Mr.Clement entered, the lonely mother looked upon him with an aspect of such bitter sorrow, of such helpless supplication in her misery, as if she said, am I left to the affliction of my own heart! Am I cut off from the piety and comfort, which distress like mine ought to derive from Christian sympathy and fellowship! Have I not even a human face to look upon, but those of my dying children! Such in similar circumstances are the questions which the heart will ask.

She could not immediately speak, but with the head of her dying boy upon her heart she sat in mute and unbroken agony, every pang of her departing orphan throwing a deeper shade of affliction over her countenance, and a keener barb of sorrow into her heart.
The champion of God, however, was at his post.

He advanced to the bed-side, and in tones which proclaimed the fulness of his sympathy in her sufferings, and with a countenance lit up by that trust in heaven which long trials of his own and similar bereavements had given him, he addressed her in words of comfort and consolation, and raised her heart to better hopes than any which this world of care and trial can bestow.
It is difficult, however, to give comfort in such moments, nor is it prudent to enforce it too strongly.