“I brushed back the hair that my fingers had idly threaded in unrest, looked one moment, in the dim twilight of morning, to see what changes my war-fare had wrought, then, cautiously, breathlessly, for fear of awakening some one, I went out.  The night-dew lay heavy on the lawn.  I heeded it not.  I knew that trouble had come to Doctor Percival’s house.  I went to the door that Chloe had opened.  No one seemed awake; deep stillness brooded over and in the dwelling.  Could I have been mistaken?  Whilst I stood in doubt whether to go or stay, there came a long, sobbing moan, that peopled the dwelling with woe.

“It came from Mary’s room.  Thither I went.  There stood Doctor and Mrs. Percival beside Mary, and she—­was dead.

“I shudder now, as I did then, though eighteen years have rolled their wheels of misery between,—­shudder, as I look in memory into that room again, and see your father standing in the awful grief that has no voice, see your mother lifting up her words of moaning, up where I so late had watched the feet of stars walking into heaven.  I don’t know how long it was, I had lost the noting of time, but I remember growing into rigidness.  I remember Bernard McKey’s wild, wretched face in the room; I remember hearing him ask if it was all over.  I remember Abraham’s coming in; I felt, when through his life the east-wind went, withering it up within him.  I do not know how I went home.  I asked no questions.  Mary was dead; she had gone whither Alice went.  It seemed little consolation to me to ask when or how she died.

“Father came home that day.  Mother forgot me for Abraham:  love of him was her life.  Father did not know, no one had told him, the events of the night before; he thought me sorrowing for Mary, and so I was; my grief seemed weak and small before this reality of sorrow.

“It was late in the day, and I was trying to get some sleep, when Chloe sent a request to see me.  I had not seen her since I knew why she had hid her suffering behind the tree in the morning.  I saw that she had something to say beside telling me of Mary; for she looked cautiously around the room, as if fearing other ears might be there to hear.

“‘Oh! oh!  Miss Lettie,’ she said, ’I stayed with Miss Mary last night.  I must have gone to sleep when she went away; but I’m afraid, I’m afraid it wasn’t the sickness that killed her.’

“‘What then? what was it, Chloe?’ I asked, whilst the tears fell fast from her eyes.

“’Doctor Percival gave her some medicine just afore he went to bed, and she said she was “very sick”; she said so a good many times, Miss Lettie, afore I went to sleep.’

“’You don’t think it was the medicine that killed her?’—­for a horrible thought had come in to me.

“‘I hope not, but I’m afraid’; and with a still lower, whispering tone, and another frightened look about the room, Chloe took from under her shawl a small cup.  She held it up close to me, and her voice penetrated with its meaning all the folds of my thought,—­’Chloe’s afraid Miss Mary drank her death in here.’