CHAPTER II.
THE DYING FATHER.
Stephen stepped over the threshold into a low, dark room, which was
filled with smoke, from a sudden gust of the wind as it swept over the
roof of the hut. On one side of the grate, which was made of some
half-hoops of iron fastened into the rock, there was a very aged man,
childish and blind with years, who was crouching towards the fire, and
talking and chuckling to himself. A girl, about a year older than
Stephen, sat in a rocking-chair, and swung to and fro as she knitted away
fast and diligently at a thick grey stocking. In the corner nearest to
the fireplace there stood a pallet-bed, hardly raised above the earthen
floor, to which Stephen hastened immediately, with an anxious look at the
thin, white face of his father lying upon the pillow. Beside the sick man
there lay a little child fast asleep, with her hand clasping one of her
father's fingers; and though James Fern was shaking and trembling with a
violent fit of coughing from the sudden gust of smoke, he took care not
to loose the hold of those tiny fingers.
'Poor little Nan!' he whispered to Stephen, as soon as he could speak.
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