lf being
drawn into the whirlpool.

The daughter--the tall, rawboned woman in crepe, with a mourning comb in
her hair which curiously lengthened her long face sat stiffly upon the
sofa, her hands, conspicuous for their large knuckles, folded in her
lap, her mouth and eyes drawn down, solemnly awaiting the opening of the
coffin. Near the door stood a mulatto woman, evidently a servant in
the house, with a timid bearing and an emaciated face pitifully sad and
gentle. She was weeping silently, the corner of her calico apron lifted
to her eyes, occasionally suppressing a long, quivering sob. Steavens
walked over and stood beside her.

Feeble steps were heard on the stairs, and an old man, tall and frail,
odorous of pipe smoke, with shaggy, unkept gray hair and a dingy beard,
tobacco stained about the mouth, entered uncertainly. He went slowly up
to the coffin and stood, rolling a blue cotton handkerchief between his
hands, seeming so pained and embarrassed by his wife's orgy of grief
that he had no consciousness of anything else.

"There, there, Annie, dear, don't take on so," he quavered timidly,
putting out a shaking hand and awkwardly patting her elbow. She turned
with a cry and sank upon his shoulder with such violence that he
tottered a little. He did not even glance toward the coffin, but
continued to look at her with a dull, frightened, appealing expression,
as a spaniel looks at the whip. His sunken cheeks slowly reddened and
burned with miserable shame. When his wife rushed from the room her
daughter strode after her with set lips. The servant stole up to the
coffin, bent over it for a moment, and then slipped away to the kitchen,
leaving Steavens, the lawyer, and the father to themselves. The old man
stood trembling and looking down at his dead son's face. The sculptor's
splendid head seemed even more noble in its rigid stillness than in
life. The dark hair had crept down upon the wide forehead; the face
seemed strangely long, but in it there was not that beautiful and chaste
repose which we expect to find in the faces of the dead. The brows were
so drawn that there were two deep lines above the beaked nose, and the
chin was thrust forward defiantly. It was as though the strain of life
had been so sharp and bitter that death could not at once wholly relax
the tension and smooth the countenance into perfect peace--as though he
were still guarding something precious and holy, which might even yet be
wrested from