doorstep.

"If it's Mrs Brown ye want, she's been in her grave this six years,"
one of them said.

"Why, Samuel tould us ye helped to lay her out this mornin'," said Jane
indignantly. A drunken-looking woman came forward.

"To be sure we did," she said. Jane fancied she saw her wink at the
others. "Samuel tould ye his poor mother was dead, didn't he, dear? I
suppose ye've brought a trifle for him, the poor orphan."

"Which house does he live in?" Jane asked.

"Don't trouble yerselves to be goin' up. The place is not fit for
quality. Lave yer charity with me, an' I'll give it to the childe."
Jane insisted on going up. The woman said she would bring Samuel down
to them. She seemed anxious to keep them back. But suddenly Samuel
himself appeared at a door.

"I knowed ye'd mebby come," he said in a hushed voice as he led them up
the stairs. He pushed open a door, and invited them to step in.

"The place is that dirty I hardly like to ask ye," he said. The room
was very dirty, but the children hardly noticed this. All their
attention was concentrated on the bed where the corpse lay, straight
and stiff, covered with a sheet. They stood silently by, awed by the
outlines of that rigid figure. Jane began to wish she had not insisted
on coming upstairs. But it was their duty to look at the dead. Samuel
would be hurt if they did not; he would think they were wanting in
respect. She dreaded the moment when he would turn back the sheet, and
show them the cold, unnatural face, that would haunt her eyes for days.
Breathing a prayer that God would not let her be frightened she stepped
forward, and put the wreath at the foot of the bed. As she did so her
hand touched something hard. At once fear gave place to suspicion.
Under cover of the wreath she felt again, and made sure the corpse was
wearing a pair of hobnailed boots. She looked carefully, and saw that
the sheet was moved as if by gentle breathing. Samuel, weeping at the
head of the bed, never offered to turn back the sheet.

"I'd like to luk at her face," said Jane at last.

Samuel cried more than ever. "Don't ast me," he said. "The poor soul
got that thin that I'd be feared for ye to see her."

"God rest her, anyhow," said Mick piously.

"Well, I'm thinkin' that's the quare thing," said Jane, looking hard at
Samuel, "not to show a buddy the corpse. I niver heard tell a' the
like." Samuel's answer was more tears. Mick and Patsy were both
asha