he tried to
raise his head, and failing that, she took the hand and nursed it on her
bosom. Peter judged apathetically that he had never really known
Electra; she looked now like a woman numb with grief over a dead child.
Then he waked himself out of his maze.

"Don't!" he heard himself calling. "People will come."

"Who will come?" she returned sharply, as if she challenged them all to
show why this should not be her dead. Then she wakened. "Go!" she cried.
"Get help. It can't be true."

"I will call the men. We can get him home among us."

He ran over the wall and on to the field where men were hoeing. When
they had dropped their work and followed him, they found Electra sitting
there by the roadside, as if she were the one mourner over the dead, and
she did not rise until they stooped to lift him, and arranged how he
should be carried. Then she said to Peter, again as if it were her
right,--

"Have him taken to my house."

Peter stared at her, but he remembered Rose.

"That will be better," he said; and added, "but who will tell her?"

"His daughter?" said Electra, in her clear tone. "I will tell her. But
there is a great deal to do before that. She can wait."

So they walked along the road like a strange funeral procession, Electra
in front, as if she had a right to lead. She turned in at her own gate,
and they followed, and she walked on up the steps and into the library,
where they laid him down. Madam Fulton and Billy Stark had gone for a
drive, and the house, in its morning order, looked as if it had been
prepared for the solemnity of this entrance. Now Electra's methodical
capacity came into play. She sent one man for the doctor and another to
the kitchen for hot water and for brandy. But when they were hurriedly
dispersed, she turned to Peter and said, with a heart-breaking quiet,--

"And yet, he is dead!"

She sat down upon the floor beside the couch and laid her head on the
dead man's heart. Peter knew it was to listen for a flutter there, but
with his sensitive apprehension of all emotion, he felt also that she
was glad to put her head upon MacLeod's breast. He was conscious of
being useless in his inactivity, but he could only stand and stare down
at them, the dead man and the mourning woman. Presently Electra got up
and stood, dry-eyed, and looked at him.

"He was coming to me," she said, in awe at the loneliness of the event.
"I couldn't sleep last night. I wish I had known a little more. I