ang down
the steps.

I did not see my father again for eighteen days.

On the steps of my uncle's house I met old Jane, a colored woman who had
nursed Annie Ware when she was a baby, and who lived now in a little
cottage near by, from whose door-steps she could see Annie's window, and
in whose garden she raised flowers of all sorts, solely for the pleasure
of carrying them to Annie every day.

Jane's face was positively gray with sorrow and fear. She looked at me
with a strange sort of unsympathizing hardness in her eyes. She had never
loved me. I knew what she thought. She was saying to herself: "Why not
this one instead of the other?"

"O auntie!" I said, "I would die for Annie; you know I would."

At this she melted. "O honey! don' ye say that. The Lord"--but she could
say no more. She threw her apron up over her head and strode away.

The doors of the house stood open. I walked through room after room, and
found no human being. At last, at the foot of the stairs in the back part
of the house, I came upon all the servants huddled together in a cowering,
weeping group. Flat on the floor, with his face to the wall, lay black
Caesar, the coachman. I put my hand on his shoulder. He jerked away
impatiently.

"Yer jest lemme lone, will yer?" he said in a choking voice; then lifting
up his head, and seeing it was I, he half sprang to his feet, with a look
of shame and alarm, and involuntarily carrying his hand to his head,
said:--

"O miss! who's gwine to think yer"--here he too broke down, and buried his
face in his great hands.

I did not speak, but the little group instinctively opened to let me pass
up the stairs. I had a vague consciousness that they said something as I
turned into a little cross-hall which led to Annie's room; but without
attending to their words I opened her door. The room was empty; the bed
stripped of clothes; the windows wide open. I sank into a chair, and
looked from side to side. I was too late, after all! That was why none of
the servants dared speak to me. A little slipper of Annie's lay on the
floor by the bed. I took it up and turned it over and over in my hands.
Then I became conscious that my Aunt Ann was speaking to me,--was calling
me by name, earnestly, repeatedly, with terror in her voice.

"My dear, dear child; Helen, Helen, Helen, she is not dead. She is in my
room. Come and see for yourself."

I had seen my Aunt Ann every day for nineteen years,--I never knew her
until