n the steps.

"I do not think you will, I,--in fact we,--" and there he paused, and
looked behind him, and a vague chilling alarm struck Bea, and made her
voice tremble as she asked--

"Is it anything so particular, any----,"

"Bad news," he said, as she hesitated. "Yes Miss,--Dering, I presume, I
do bring bad news, your father----;"

Ernestine stood in the sitting-room door, and as the words were uttered,
she saw Bea rush out, heard a faint scream, and a strange voice say,
"catch her, she's falling;" then there came a tramp of feet across the
porch, and four men crossed the hall, and came into the room with a
strange burden; a rude litter, with a motionless figure on a mattress!
Bea had fainted, for she had followed it, but as the men set their
burden down with pitying faces, there came a shrill scream and a fall,
for Ernestine dropped to the floor, and Jean continued to scream with
her face hid. The three girls from up stairs came flying down, Huldah
ran from the kitchen, and in the dire confusion, the strangers stood,
not knowing what to do, or whom to address, for every one seemed to have
lost self-possession in the overwhelming shock. So thought the gentleman
who seemed to be leader, but at that minute a hand touched his arm, and
a voice startlingly hushed, asked: "Is he _dead_?"

"He is, madam."

A spasm of pain crossed her set-white face, as her lips opened slowly,
and the next question came with a gasp of dread:

"By--by his own hand?"

"Oh, no, madam, no indeed," cried the gentleman eagerly, glad to give
that relief. "He was on the train going down to the city, which was
wrecked twenty miles this side of it. His death was instant and
painless, a blow on the left temple."

"Thank God!"

She uttered it slowly, and almost below her breath, then lifted her eyes
from the peaceful face so life-like in death, and looked around the
room. Ernestine lay moaning on the lounge, Kittie and Kat locked in each
others arms crouched in the corner, tearless, because paralyzed with
fright, Jean shook as with a spasm in Bea's lap, while Huldah stood by
the lounge, with her apron over her head; and the men stood hushed and
abashed with their eyes down.

"Take Jean out," Olive said again in that strange still voice. "Huldah
carry Ernestine to her room, and Kittie, you and Kat go out to the steps
and watch for mama."

How instantly they all obeyed her, as though recognizing one with
authority, and how curiously the ge