The kind-featured woman saw the pallor on his face and the tremor on his lips, and led him to a chair.  She ascribed his weakness to sorrow and excitement, and the dread of looking on a dead face.

“Poor boy!” she said.  “I don’t wonder at it; he was more than generous to us all.”

But Joe, afraid that the resolutions he had labored on with so much diligence would be forgotten, spoke of them again to Ralph.

“Oh, yes,” said Ralph, with a wan smile, “oh, yes! here’s the res’lutions.  That’s the way the breaker boys feel—­the way it says in this paper; an’ we want Mrs. Burnham to know.”

“I’ll take it to her,” said the woman, receiving from Ralph’s hands the awkwardly folded and now sadly soiled paper.  “You will wait here a moment, please.”

She passed up the broad staircase, by the richly colored window at the landing, and was lost to sight; while the two boys, sitting in the spacious hall, gazed, with wondering eyes, upon the beauty which surrounded them.

The widow of Robert Burnham sat in the morning-room of her desolated home, talking calmly with her friends.

After the first shock incident upon her husband’s death had passed away, she had made no outcry, she grew quiet and self-possessed, she was ready for any consultation, gave all necessary orders, spoke of her dead husband’s goodness to her with a smile on her face, and looked calmly forth into the future.  The shock of that terrible message from the mines, two days ago, had paralyzed her emotional nature, and left her white-faced and tearless.

She had a smile and a kind word for every one as before; she had eaten mechanically; but she had lain with wide-open eyes all night, and still no one had seen a single tear upon her cheeks.  This was why they feared for her; they said,

  “She must weep, or she will die.”

Some one came into the room and spoke to her.

“The breaker boys, who asked to come this morning, are here.”

“Let them come in,” she said, “and pass through the parlors and look upon him; and let them be treated with all kindness and courtesy.”

“They have brought this paper, containing resolutions passed by them, which they would like to have you read.”

Mrs. Burnham took the paper, and asked the woman to wait while she read it.  There was something in the fact that these boys had passed resolutions of sympathy that touched her heart.  She unfolded the soiled paper and read:—­

    Wee, the braker Boys of burnham braker in mass meeting met Did
    pass thease res’lutions. first the braker Boys is all vary sory
    indede Cause mister Burnham dide.