“Now I am coming to the strangest part of it all.  Mrs. Bird died very sudden.  One morning—­it was Saturday, and there wasn’t any school—­I went downstairs to breakfast, and Mrs. Bird wasn’t there; there was nobody but Mrs. Dennison.  She was pouring out the coffee when I came in.  ‘Why, where’s Mrs. Bird?’ says I.

“‘Abby ain’t feeling very well this morning,’ says she; ’there isn’t much the matter, I guess, but she didn’t sleep very well, and her head aches, and she’s sort of chilly, and I told her I thought she’d better stay in bed till the house gets warm.’  It was a very cold morning.

“‘Maybe she’s got cold,’ says I.

“‘Yes, I guess she has,’ says Mrs. Dennison.  ’I guess she’s got cold.  She’ll be up before long.  Abby ain’t one to stay in bed a minute longer than she can help.’

“Well, we went on eating our breakfast, and all at once a shadow flickered across one wall of the room and over the ceiling the way a shadow will sometimes when somebody passes the window outside.  Mrs. Dennison and I both looked up, then out of the window; then Mrs. Dennison she gives a scream.

“‘Why, Abby’s crazy!’ says she.  ’There she is out this bitter cold morning, and—­and—­’ She didn’t finish, but she meant the child.  For we were both looking out, and we saw, as plain as we ever saw anything in our lives, Mrs. Abby Bird walking off over the white snow-path with that child holding fast to her hand, nestling close to her as if she had found her own mother.

“‘She’s dead,’ says Mrs. Dennison, clutching hold of me hard.  ‘She’s dead; my sister is dead!’

“She was.  We hurried upstairs as fast as we could go, and she was dead in her bed, and smiling as if she was dreaming, and one arm and hand was stretched out as if something had hold of it; and it couldn’t be straightened even at the last—­it lay out over her casket at the funeral.”

“Was the child ever seen again?” asked Mrs. Emerson in a shaking voice.

“No,” replied Mrs. Meserve; “that child was never seen again after she went out of the yard with Mrs. Bird.”