you controlled your nerves, Rebecca," she said.

Mrs. Brigham, returning from the closed door, said imperiously that it
ought to be fixed, it shut so hard.

"It will shrink enough after we have had the fire a few days," replied
Caroline.

"I think Henry ought to be ashamed of himself for talking as he did to
Edward," said Mrs. Brigham abruptly, but in an almost inaudible voice.

"Hush," said Caroline, with a glance of actual fear at the closed door.

"Nobody can hear with the door shut. I say again I think Henry ought to
be ashamed of himself. I shouldn't think he'd ever get over it, having
words with poor Edward the very night before he died. Edward was enough
sight better disposition than Henry, with all his faults."

"I never heard him speak a cross word, unless he spoke cross to Henry
that last night. I don't know but he did from what Rebecca overheard."

"Not so much cross, as sort of soft, and sweet, and aggravating,"
sniffed Rebecca.

"What do you really think ailed Edward?" asked Emma in hardly more than
a whisper. She did not look at her sister.

"I know you said that he had terrible pains in his stomach, and had
spasms, but what do you think made him have them?"

"Henry called it gastric trouble. You know Edward has always had
dyspepsia."

Mrs. Brigham hesitated a moment. "Was there any talk of
an--examination?" said she.

Then Caroline turned on her fiercely.

"No," said she in a terrible voice. "No."

The three sisters' souls seemed to meet on one common ground of
terrified understanding through their eyes.

The old-fashioned latch of the door was heard to rattle, and a push from
without made the door shake ineffectually. "It's Henry," Rebecca sighed
rather than whispered. Mrs. Brigham settled herself, after a noiseless
rush across the floor, into her rocking-chair again, and was swaying
back and forth with her head comfortably leaning back, when the door at
last yielded and Henry Glynn entered. He cast a covertly sharp,
comprehensive glance at Mrs. Brigham with her elaborate calm; at Rebecca
quietly huddled in the corner of the sofa with her handkerchief to her
face and only one small uncovered reddened ear as attentive as a dog's,
and at Caroline sitting with a strained composure in her armchair by the
stove. She met his eyes quite firmly with a look of inscrutable fear,
and defiance of the fear and of him.

Henry Glynn looked more like this sister than the others. Both had the
same ha