ock.

Jude stood bending over the kettle, with his watch in his hand,
timing the eggs, so that his back was turned to the little inner
chamber where the children lay. A shriek from Sue suddenly caused
him to start round. He saw that the door of the room, or rather
closet--which had seemed to go heavily upon its hinges as she pushed
it back--was open, and that Sue had sunk to the floor just within it.
Hastening forward to pick her up he turned his eyes to the little
bed spread on the boards; no children were there. He looked in
bewilderment round the room. At the back of the door were fixed
two hooks for hanging garments, and from these the forms of the two
youngest children were suspended, by a piece of box-cord round each
of their necks, while from a nail a few yards off the body of little
Jude was hanging in a similar manner. An overturned chair was near
the elder boy, and his glazed eyes were slanted into the room; but
those of the girl and the baby boy were closed.

Half-paralyzed by the strange and consummate horror of the scene he
let Sue lie, cut the cords with his pocket-knife and threw the three
children on the bed; but the feel of their bodies in the momentary
handling seemed to say that they were dead. He caught up Sue, who
was in fainting fits, and put her on the bed in the other room, after
which he breathlessly summoned the landlady and ran out for a doctor.

When he got back Sue had come to herself, and the two helpless
women, bending over the children in wild efforts to restore them,
and the triplet of little corpses, formed a sight which overthrew
his self-command. The nearest surgeon came in, but, as Jude had
inferred, his presence was superfluous. The children were past
saving, for though their bodies were still barely cold it was
conjectured that they had been hanging more than an hour. The
probability held by the parents later on, when they were able to
reason on the case, was that the elder boy, on waking, looked into
the outer room for Sue, and, finding her absent, was thrown into a
fit of aggravated despondency that the events and information of the
evening before had induced in his morbid temperament. Moreover a
piece of paper was found upon the floor, on which was written, in
the boy's hand, with the bit of lead pencil that he carried:

_Done because we are too menny._

At sight of this Sue's nerves utterly gave way, an awful conviction
that her discourse with the boy had