him his first realization of human misery.

His own glance fell before it. If he had followed his instinct he would
have fled the house rather than answer the question of her look and the
attitude of her whole frozen body.

Perhaps in mercy to his speechless terror, perhaps in mercy to herself,
she was the one who at last found the word which voiced their mutual
anguish.

"Dead?"

No answer. None was needed.

"And my baby?"

O, that cry! It curdled the hearts of all who heard it. It shook the
souls of men and women both inside and outside the apartment; then all
was forgotten in the wild rush she made. The wife and mother had
flung herself upon the scene, and, side by side with the not unmoved
policeman, stood looking down upon the desolation made in one fatal
instant in her home and heart.

They lay there together, both past help, both quite dead. The child
had simply been strangled by the weight of his father's arm which lay
directly across the upturned little throat. But the father was a victim
of the shot they had heard. There was blood on his breast, and a pistol
in his hand.

Suicide! The horrible truth was patent. No wonder they wanted to hold
the young widow back. Her neighbour, Mrs. Saunders, crept in on tiptoe
and put her arms about the swaying, fainting woman; but there was
nothing to say--absolutely nothing.

At least, they thought not. But when they saw her throw herself down,
not by her husband, but by the child, and drag it out from under that
strangling arm and hug and kiss it and call out wildly for a doctor, the
officer endeavoured to interfere and yet could not find the heart to do
so, though he knew the child was dead and should not, according to
all the rules of the coroner's office, be moved before that official
arrived. Yet because no mother could be convinced of a fact like this,
he let her sit with it on the floor and try all her little arts to
revive it, while he gave orders to the janitor and waited himself for
the arrival of doctor and coroner.

She was still sitting there in wide-eyed misery, alternately fondling
the little body and drawing back to consult its small set features for
some sign of life, when the doctor came, and, after one look at the
child, drew it softly from her arms and laid it quietly in the crib from
which its father had evidently lifted it but a short time before. Then
he turned back to her, and found her on her feet, upheld by her two
friends. She had un