th Mrs. Mandel's help, and up the stairs.

From the top the old woman called down, "You tell Coonrod--" She
stopped, and he heard her groan out, "My Lord! my Lord!"

He sat, one silence in the dining-room, where they had all lingered
together, and in the library beyond the hireling watcher sat, another
silence. The time passed, but neither moved, and the last noise in the
house ceased, so that they heard each other breathe, and the vague,
remote rumor of the city invaded the inner stillness. It grew louder
toward morning, and then Dryfoos knew from the watcher's deeper
breathing that he had fallen into a doze.

He crept by him to the drawing-room, where his son was; the place was
full of the awful sweetness of the flowers that Fulkerson had brought,
and that lay above the pulseless breast. The old man turned up a burner
in the chandelier, and stood looking on the majestic serenity of the
dead face.

He could not move when he saw his wife coming down the stairway in the
hall. She was in her long, white flannel bed gown, and the candle she
carried shook with her nervous tremor. He thought she might be walking
in her sleep, but she said, quite simply, "I woke up, and I couldn't git
to sleep ag'in without comin' to have a look." She stood beside their
dead son with him, "well, he's beautiful, Jacob. He was the prettiest
baby! And he was always good, Coonrod was; I'll say that for him. I
don't believe he ever give me a minute's care in his whole life. I
reckon I liked him about the best of all the children; but I don't know
as I ever done much to show it. But you was always good to him, Jacob;
you always done the best for him, ever since he was a little feller. I
used to be afraid you'd spoil him sometimes in them days; but I guess
you're glad now for every time you didn't cross him. I don't suppose
since the twins died you ever hit him a lick." She stooped and peered
closer at the face. "Why, Jacob, what's that there by his pore eye?"
Dryfoos saw it, too, the wound that he had feared to look for, and that
now seemed to redden on his sight. He broke into a low, wavering cry,
like a child's in despair, like an animal's in terror, like a soul's in
the anguish of remorse.

VII.

The evening after the funeral, while the Marches sat together talking
it over, and making approaches, through its shadow, to the question of
their own future, which it involved, they were startled by the twitter
of the electric bell at thei