CHAPTER XIX.

_A Short Chapter, not very interesting, perhaps, but of some Importance in the Story, as the Reader will probably discover after awhile._

When the letter from which a quotation was made in the preceding chapter came to Miss Sudie, that young lady was not at Shirley but at The Oaks, where Ewing was lying very ill. He had been prostrated suddenly, a few days before, and from the first had been delirious with fever. The doctor had appeared unusually anxious regarding his patient ever since he was first summoned to see him, and Cousin Sarah Ann having given way to her alarm at the evident danger in which her son lay to such an extent as to be wholly useless to herself or to anybody else, Miss Sudie had been called in to act as temporary mistress of the mansion.

The very next mail after the one which brought her letter, had in it one from Robert addressed to Ewing himself. Miss Sudie, upon discovering it in the bag, carried it to Cousin Sarah Ann, and was very decidedly shocked when that estimable lady without a word broke the seal and read the letter, putting it carefully away afterwards in Ewing's desk, of which she had the key. Miss Sudie said nothing, however, and the matter was almost forgotten when in the evening the doctor came and sat down by the sick boy's bed.

"I think it my duty to tell you," said he to Cousin Sarah Ann, "that the crisis of the disease is rapidly approaching, and I must wait here until it passes. Your son is in very great danger; but we shall know within a few hours whether there is hope for him or not. I confess that while I hope the best I fear the worst."

Mrs. Pagebrook was thoroughly overcome by her fright. She loved her son, in her own queer way; and being a very weak woman she gave way entirely when she understood in how very critical a condition the boy was. It was necessary to exclude her from the room, and the doctor remained, with Miss Sudie and Maj. Pagebrook. About midnight he stood and looked intently at the sick man's features, listening also to his hard-coming breath. He stood there full half an hour--then turning to Miss Sudie, he said:

"It's of no use, Miss Barksdale. Our young friend is beyond hope. He cannot live an hour. Perhaps you'd better inform his mother."

But before Miss Sudie could leave the bedside, Ewing roused himself for a moment, and tried to say something to her.

"Tell Robert--I got sick the very day--twenty-one--"

This was all Miss Sudie could hear, and she thought the patient's mind was wandering still, as it had been throughout his illness. And these incoherent words were the last the young man ever uttered.

About a week after Ewing's death Cousin Sarah Ann said to Maj. Pagebrook:

"Cousin Edwin, are you ever going to collect that money from Robert? He promised to pay you on or before the fifteenth of November, and now it's nearly the last of the month and you haven't a line of explanation from him yet. I told you he wouldn't pay it till we made him. You oughtn't to've let him run away in your debt at all, and you wouldn't either, if you'd a'listened to me. Why don't you write to him?"

"Well, I don't like to press the poor fellow. He's lost his money you know, and I reckon he finds it hard to pull through till January. He'll pay when he can, I reckon."

"O that's always the way with you! For my part I don't believe he had any money in the bank; and besides he said there was some money coming to him on his salary, and he promised faithfully to pay you out of that. I told you he wouldn't, because I knew him. He tried to make out he was so much superior to the rest of us, and talked about 'reforming' poor Ewing, just as if the poor boy was a drunkard and--and--and--if you don't write I will, and I'll make him pay that money too, or I'll know why."

The conversation ended as such conversations usually did in Maj. Pagebrook's family, namely, by the abrupt departure of that gentleman from the house.

Cousin Sarah Ann evidently meant what she said, and her husband was no sooner out of the house than she got out her desk and wrote; not to Robert, however, but to Messrs. Steel, Flint & Sharp, attorneys and counselors at law, in New York city. Her note was not a long one, but it told the whole story of Robert's indebtedness from a not very favorable point of view, and closed with a request that the attorneys should "push the case by every means the law allows." This note was signed not with Cousin Sarah Ann's own but with her husband's name, and her first proceeding, after sealing the letter, was to send it by a servant to the post-office. She then ordered her carriage and drove over to Shirley.