foot of the stairs, she knew that she was right,
and she stood and looked, with her heart sinking down, down,
wondering with a great dread what could have happened. Her
grandfather was sitting in his usual seat at the end of the table,
holding a letter in his hand, while her grandmother stood beside him,
her hand leaning heavily on his shoulder; and both their faces looked
white and drawn, and full of trouble. Tears sprang to Jessie's eyes
at sight of them. Neither was speaking, but every now and then there
burst from the old man that strange sound that Jessie had heard, and
it was like the cry of a hurt animal.

When she heard it again, and knew whence it came, Jessie flew to him
in terror. "Oh, granp, what is it?" she cried. "Who has hurt him?"
she cried, turning to her grandmother almost fiercely. "Who has done
anything to granp--and you?" she added, when she caught sight of her
grandmother's face.

Patience Dawson's hand slipped from her husband's shoulder down to
Jessie's, and crept caressingly round the little girl's neck, while
the old man threw his arm around her to draw her nearer to him.

"'Tis your mother, child," cried Patience, her words seeming to
tumble from her anyhow. "She's dead! Our only child, and took from
us for ever, and never knowing how much we loved and forgave her, and
how we've hungered night and day for a sight of her--and now I shall
never, never see her again!" and then poor Patience broke down, and
kneeling beside her husband and grandchild, bowed her head on the
table and wept uncontrollably.

At the sight of their trouble Jessie's own tears fell fast.
"Mother," she cried, scarcely grasping the real state of the case,
and all it meant to her. "Mother! dead? Granp, mother isn't really
dead, is she? Won't I--won't I never see her any more," the truth
gradually forcing itself on her mind--"won't she ever come and live
here with us, and see my rose--and--and all the things I've been
saving for her?" Her little face was white now, and her lips
quivering with the pain of realization.

Her grandfather shook his head. "She won't ever come to us; never,
never no more," he sighed heavily. "But maybe," he added a moment
later, speaking slowly and with difficulty, "maybe she sees and knows
now, better than she has all these years--and is happier."

"Why didn't she write, why didn't she tell us where she was?" wailed
Patience despairingly. "I would have wrote at once and told he