rrible in its blackness on the
earth. "Why, of course, you mustn't think of leaving your wife. You must
telephone Simpson to come for me."

"All right." Elbridge took himself away.

Northwick watched him across the icy stable-yard, going to the
coachman's quarters in that cosy corner of the spreading barn; the
windows were still as cheerily bright with lamplight as when they struck
a pang of dumb envy to Northwick's heart. The child's sickness must have
been very sudden for his daughters not to have known of it. He thought
he ought to call Adeline, and send her in there to those poor people;
but he reflected that she could do no good, and he spared her the
useless pain; she would soon need all her strength for herself. His
thought returned to his own cares, from which the trouble of another had
lured it for a moment. But when he heard the doctor's sleigh-bells clash
into the stable-yard, he decided to go himself and show the interest his
family ought to feel in the matter.

No one answered his knock at Elbridge's door, and he opened it and found
his way into the room, where Elbridge and his wife were with the doctor.
The little boy had started up in his crib, and was struggling, with his
arms thrown wildly about.

"There! There, he's got another of them chokin' spells!" screamed the
mother. "Elbridge Newton, ain't you goin' to do anything? Oh help him,
save him, Dr. Morrell! Oh, I should think you'd be ashamed to let him
suffer so!" She sprang upon the child, and caught him from the doctor's
hands, and turned him this way and that trying to ease him; he was
suddenly quiet, and she said, "There, I just knew I could do it! What
are you big, strong men good for, any--" She looked down at the child's
face in her arms, and then up at the doctor's, and she gave a wild
screech, like the cry of one in piercing torment.

It turned Northwick heart-sick. He felt himself worse than helpless
there; but he went to the farmer's house, and told the farmer's wife to
go over to the Newtons'; their little boy had just died. He heard her
coming before he reached his own door, and when he reached his room, he
heard the bells of the doctor's sleigh clashing out of the avenue.

The voice and the look of that childless mother haunted him. She had
been one of the hat-shop hands, a flighty, nervous thing, madly in love
with Elbridge, whom she ruled with a sort of frantic devotion since
their marriage, compensating his cool quiet with a per