rs. The company had
taken for me one of those quick likings peculiar to our people;
principally, I think, because being a temporary star (by the grace of Mr.
Daly's will) they had expected me to be haughtily dictatorial, instead of
shy to the point of misery, and because of their mistake they treated me
like a long-sought sister, instead of the stranger I was.

They publicly presented me with a gift on my last night, and almost in a
body saw my mother and myself off on our Sunday night start for home.
Everyone had left the car but big, hearty Joe Barrett--he still clung
silently to my hands, though my mother begged him to go before he met
with an injury. The train was out of the depot--the speed increasing
rapidly, before he dropped off, safely landing just beneath a light, high
above his head. His hat was off, his empty hand held out toward me, and
in that light his face was as the face of the sorrowful dead. It chilled
me, all my high spirits flattened down suddenly; I turned, and said: "Did
_you_ see, mother?" and she answered: "It was the light, and his
unhappiness, that made him look so like a--so sad," so I knew she had
seen him as I had.

Our journey was saddened by an accident, and when the train backed to
take up the creature it had crushed, not knowing what had happened, by
chance, I glanced down from the window, full into the face of the victim
as they bore him past. He had been a large, broad-shouldered man, and the
still, white face was so like Barrett's that I almost fainted. Everyone
in the car seemed to feel some measure of culpability for the mishap; and
at every unusual jolt or jar we looked with frightened eyes from the
windows, dreading lest another stretcher might be borne into view. At
last we were at home, and in work I regained my usual spirits.

A few weeks, three or four, had passed. One morning I awakened myself
from a dreamless sleep by my own singing. I faced the blank wall. I
smiled sleepily at the absurdity of the thing, then I grew more awake,
and as I sang on, I said to myself: "What is it--why, what can it be,
that I am singing?"

There were no words to this mournful, heart-breaking air, that ended with
a wail, long and weird.

"Mother," I called, the door being open between our rooms, "Mother, did
you hear me singing just now?"

"Well, yes," she replied, "since I am not deaf, I heard you very
plainly."

"Oh," I cried, "can you tell me what it was I sang?"

My mother raised he