Fortunately the suspense did not last very long.  Before two hours had passed they heard footsteps coming up the path to the house.  Jessie knew them, and flew out to meet her mother.  Miss Patch stirred the fire into a cheerful blaze, then smiled to herself at the uselessness of her own act.  She longed to do so much, yet was able to do so little.

Mrs. Lang came in slowly, heavily; her face was white, her eyes were red.

“He is dead,” she gasped, as she dropped heavily into a chair.  “He is dead!” and her voice grew high and shrill and quavering.

“Poor soul, poor soul,” sighed Miss Patch softly.  “Did he suffer much?  I hope he was spared that.”

“He was never conscious, he—­he—­had no time to be sorry—­to repent, or try to be better.  He was struck down in the midst of all his wickedness and folly, with lying and cheating and bad language all about him.  His last feeling was passion—­and so he died—­and I feel that I am as bad as any of them, I never tried to save him,” and the poor widow laid her head on her outstretched arms and sobbed uncontrollably.

Miss Patch laid her thin arm around the shaking shoulder.  “You did.  My dear, you did.  When first you knew him you were always trying.”

“And then I got tired and gave up, and never tried any more, and we drifted further and further away—­and now it is too late.  He is dead, dead in all his sinfulness!”

Jessie crept away and up to her own little room.  It was dark there and peaceful; the street outside was unusually quiet, awed into silence, for the time, by the tragedy in their midst—­for the news had spread like wildfire.

The window was open, and up in the steely blue sky the moon was sailing, large, peaceful, grand.  Jessie knelt by the window and gazed up at the sky and the moon, awed and wondering.  She was dazed and overcome by all that had happened.  Then she buried her face in her hands and prayed that her mother might be comforted.

She tried to think of some good deeds her father had done; but, alas, poor child, she could think of none, though it seemed treacherous to his memory to try, and fail.

Two days later Harry Lang was laid in his grave.  Quite a crowd attended his funeral, but only four “mourners,” and the chief of those four were the two he had wronged most, his widow and his child.  Tom Salter, who had shown himself kind and helpful and full of thought in this terrible time, went to support the widow, and Miss Patch, in spite of her lameness, and pain, and weakness, went too, as a mark of respect to those that were left, and as a companion for poor Jessie.

Everything was done as nicely and carefully as though the dead man had been the best of husbands and fathers; no outward mark of respect was lacking; but, though none spoke it aloud, each one felt, as they returned to the empty house, that there was none of that awful sense of blankness, of loss, of heartrending silence, which usually fills the house that death has visited, the feeling that something is gone which can never, never return.  There was, instead, almost a sense of relief, a feeling of peace.  They all tried not to feel it, and nothing would have made them admit it, even to themselves; but it was there—­one of the most sad and awe-inspiring feelings of that dreadful day.