e lips parted--the life,
scarcely twenty-four hours old, had passed away.

So sudden, so strange was the event--the almost instantaneous gliding
from life to death--that Bella had not altered her position, or loosened
her clasp when the final change, so awful and yet so beautiful, settled
down upon the baby's face. Then she put it into the nurse's arms, and
they looked at one another. They dared not speak, for the mother would
have heard them, and their consultation how to tell her must needs be a
speechless one; but what consultation could have altered the fact, or
softened the awe and terror with which they bent over that little
lifeless form? Lucia came from the low chair where the two elder
children sat together, and where she had been talking softly to them;
she came to Bella's side, and saw the truth. It was but by a gesture
that her cry of horror could be repressed, but it was repressed, and for
a minute the three paused irresolute and tearful, wondering what to do?

Then the nurse said softly,

"She's got to know it, poor soul! It's best tell her at once," and
stepped to the bedside.

But there was no need to tell anything. With that strange quick
intuition which so often saves the actual speaking of such tidings, the
mother seemed to see what had happened.

"He's gone?" she said, with a weak quivering voice. "My baby!" And her
eyes seemed to devour the still little form which she had not strength
to put out her hand to touch. The kind woman laid down the child for a
moment where the mother's lips could touch its cold cheek.

"Don't fret," she said, while tears rolled down her own face; "there's
three on 'em yet, as wants their mother to take care on 'em."

She seemed to have touched with instinctive skill the right chord for
consolation. Mrs. Clarkson spoke again after a minute with a steadier
and calmer voice,

"You'll lay him by me now?" she said. "It can't wake him out of his
sleep, and I'd like to see him till the last. Is Mrs. Morton there
still?"

Bella came to her.

"Did you see him go?" she asked. "I was very thankful to you before, but
I am more now, because you came just in time. Don't you think the little
ones that never spoke in this world will be able to speak up there?"

"Yes, I think so," Bella answered, fancying that her mind began to
wander.

"And so you see my man is sure to ask what we were all doing, and the
little one would be able to tell him how good you'd been to us."

S