a child sleeping. On the bed, covered with
a dingy sheet, lay the stark form out of which the miserable life had so
lately passed.

The women opened the blinds, blew out the light, and began performing
the necessary duties for the dead.

"Anyhow, let her body go clean before her Maker," said Miss Hester
Prime, severely.

"Don't be too hard on the pore soul, Miss Hester," returned Mrs. Davis.
"She had a hard time of it. I knowed Margar't when she was n't so low
down as in her last days."

"She ought n't never to 'a' left her husband."

"Oh, ef you 'd 'a' knowed him as I did, Miss Hester, you would n't never
say that. He was a brute: sich beatin's as he used to give her when he
was in liquor you never heerd tell of."

"That was hard, but as long as he was a husband he was a protection to
her name."

"True enough. Protection is a good dish, but a beatin's a purty bitter
sauce to take with it."

"I wonder what 's ever become of Brent."

"Lord knows. No one 'ain't heerd hide ner hair o' him sence he went away
from town. People thought that he was a-hangin' around tryin' to git a
chance to kill Mag after she got her divorce from him, but all at once
he packed off without sayin' a word to anybody. I guess he's drunk
himself to death by this time."

When they had finished with Margaret, the women set to work to clean up
the house. The city physician who had attended the dead woman in her
last hours had reported the case for county burial, and the undertaker
was momentarily expected.

"We 'll have to git the child up an' git his pallet out of the way, so
the floor kin be swept."

"A body hates to wake the pore little motherless dear."

"Perhaps, after all, the child is better off without her example."

"Yes, Miss Hester, perhaps; but a mother, after all, is a mother."

"Even sich a one as this?"

"Even sich a one as this."

Mrs. Davis bent over the child, and was about to lift him, when he
stirred, opened his eyes, and sat up of his own accord. He appeared
about five years of age. He might have been a handsome child, but
hardship and poor feeding had taken away his infantile plumpness, and he
looked old and haggard, even beneath the grime on his face. The kindly
woman lifted him up and began to dress him.

"I want my mamma," said the child.

Neither of the women answered: there was something tugging at their
heart-strings that killed speech.

Finally the little woman said, "I don't know ef we did righ