t achieves what all the despair and sorrow
have failed in doing. In the house, through it, awakening all the
silence, rings a peal of childish laughter. It echoes; it trembles
along the corridor outside; it seems to shake the very walls of the
death-chamber.

Both the women start violently. Molly, raising her hands to her head,
falls back against the wall nearest to her, unutterable horror in her
face. Letitia, with a quick, sharp cry, springs to her feet, and then,
running to Molly, flings her arms around her.

"Molly, Molly," she exclaims, wildly, "am I going mad? That cannot--it
cannot be _his_ child."

Then they cling to each other in silent agony, until at length some
cruel band around their hearts gives way, and the sorrowful, healing,
blessed tears spring forth.

* * * * *

The last sad scene is over; the curtain has fallen. The final separation
has taken place. Their dead has been buried out of their sight.

The room in which he lay has been thrown open, the blinds raised, the
windows lifted. Through them the sweet, fresh wind comes rushing in.
The heartless sun--now grown cold and wintry--has sent some of its rays
to peer curiously where so lately the body lay.

The children are growing more demonstrative. More frequently, and with
less fear of reproof, the sound of their mirth is heard throughout the
silent house. Only this very morning the boy Lovat--the eldest born,
his father's idol--went whistling through the hall. No doubt it was in
a moment of forgetfulness he did it; no doubt the poor lad checked
himself an instant later, with a bitter pang of self-reproach; but his
mother heard him, and the sound smote her to the heart.

Mr. Buscarlet (who is a kind little man, in spite of his "ways and his
manners" and a few eccentricities of speech), at a word from Molly
comes to Brooklyn, and, having carefully examined letters, papers, and
affairs generally, turns their fears into unhappy certainty. One
thousand pounds is all that remains to them on which to live or starve.

The announcement of their ruin is hardly news to Letitia. She has been
prepared for it. The letter found crushed in her dead husband's hand,
although suppressing half the truth, did not deceive her. Even at that
awful moment she quite realized her position. Not so Molly. With all
the unreasoning trust of youth she hoped against hope until it was no
longer possible to do so, trying to believe tha