chair.
"He is dead!" and her voice grew high and shrill and quavering.

"Poor soul, poor soul," sighed Miss Patch softly. "Did he suffer
much? I hope he was spared that."

"He was never conscious, he--he--had no time to be sorry--to repent,
or try to be better. He was struck down in the midst of all his
wickedness and folly, with lying and cheating and bad language all
about him. His last feeling was passion--and so he died--and I feel
that I am as bad as any of them, I never tried to save him," and the
poor widow laid her head on her outstretched arms and sobbed
uncontrollably.

Miss Patch laid her thin arm around the shaking shoulder. "You did.
My dear, you did. When first you knew him you were always trying."

"And then I got tired and gave up, and never tried any more, and we
drifted further and further away--and now it is too late. He is
dead, dead in all his sinfulness!"

Jessie crept away and up to her own little room. It was dark there
and peaceful; the street outside was unusually quiet, awed into
silence, for the time, by the tragedy in their midst--for the news
had spread like wildfire.

The window was open, and up in the steely blue sky the moon was
sailing, large, peaceful, grand. Jessie knelt by the window and
gazed up at the sky and the moon, awed and wondering. She was dazed
and overcome by all that had happened. Then she buried her face in
her hands and prayed that her mother might be comforted.

She tried to think of some good deeds her father had done; but,
alas, poor child, she could think of none, though it seemed
treacherous to his memory to try, and fail.

Two days later Harry Lang was laid in his grave. Quite a crowd
attended his funeral, but only four "mourners," and the chief of
those four were the two he had wronged most, his widow and his child.
Tom Salter, who had shown himself kind and helpful and full of
thought in this terrible time, went to support the widow, and Miss
Patch, in spite of her lameness, and pain, and weakness, went too, as
a mark of respect to those that were left, and as a companion for
poor Jessie.

Everything was done as nicely and carefully as though the dead man
had been the best of husbands and fathers; no outward mark of respect
was lacking; but, though none spoke it aloud, each one felt, as they
returned to the empty house, that there was none of that awful sense
of blankness, of loss, of heartrending silence, which usually fills
the house t