The sorrowing woman, her fingers still softly pressing down her sister’s eyelids, looked up in mute inquiry.

“Your necessities and—­Nora’s child must be provided for.  Will you give me some writing materials?” And the speaker dropped, as if totally prostrated, into a chair by the table.

With some difficulty Hannah sought and found an old inkstand, a stumpy pen, and a scrap of paper.  It was the best she could do.  Stationery was scarce in the poor hut.  She laid them on the table before Herman.  And with a trembling hand he wrote out a check upon the local bank and put it in her hand, saying: 

“This sum will provide for the boy, and set you and Gray up in some little business.  You had better marry and go to the West, taking the child with you.  Be a mother to the orphan, Hannah, for he will never know another parent.  And now shake hands and say good-by, for we shall never meet again in this world.”

Too thoroughly bewildered with grief to comprehend the purport of his words and acts, Hannah mechanically received the check and returned the pressure of the hand with which it was given.

And the next instant the miserable young man was gone indeed.

Hannah dropped the paper upon the table; she did not in the least suspect that that little strip of soiled foolscap represented the sum of five thousand dollars, nor is it likely that she would have taken it had she known what it really was.  Hannah’s intellects were chaotic with her troubles.  She returned to the bedside and was once more absorbed in her sorrowful task, when she was again interrupted.

This time it was by old Dinah, who, having no hand at liberty, shoved the door open with her foot, and entered the hut.

If “there is but one step between the sublime and the ridiculous,” there is no step at all between the awful and the absurd, which are constantly seen side by side.  Though such a figure as old Dinah presented, standing in the middle of the death-chamber, is not often to be found in tragic scenes.  Her shoulders were bent beneath the burden of an enormous bundle of bed clothing, and her arms were dragged down by the weight of two large baskets of provisions.  She was much too absorbed in her own ostentatious benevolence to look at once towards the bed and see what had happened there.  Probably, if she glanced at the group at all, she supposed that Hannah was only bathing Nora’s head; for instead of going forward or tendering any sympathy or assistance, she just let her huge bundle drop from her shoulders and sat her two baskets carefully upon the table, exclaiming triumphantly: 

“Dar! dar’s somefin to make de poor gal comfo’ble for a mont’ or more!  Dar, in dat bundle is two thick blankets and four pa’r o’ sheets an’ pilly cases, all out’n my own precious chist; an’ not beholden to ole mis’ for any on ’em,” she added, as she carefully untied the bundle and laid its contents, nicely folded, upon a chair.