By a late train that night they left for Hatton Hall, reaching the village about the time for the mill to open.  No bell summoned its hands to cheerful work.  They were standing at various points, and when the small white coffin went up the hill, they silently followed, softly singing.  At the great gates the weeping grandmother received them.

For one day the living and the dead dwelt together in hushed and sorrowful mourning, nor did a word of comfort come to any soul.  The weight of that grief which hung like lead upon the rooms, the stairs, the galleries where her step had lately been so light, was also on every heart; and although we ought to be diviner for our dead, the strength of this condition was not as yet realized.  John had shut himself in his room, and the grandmother went about her household duties silently weeping and trying to put down the angry thoughts which would arise whenever she remembered how stubbornly her daughter-in-law had refused to leave Martha with her, and make her trip to London alone.  She knew it was “well with the child,” but Oh the bitter strength of regrets that strain and sicken,

    Yearning for love that the veil of Death endears.

Jane sat silent, tearless, almost motionless beside her dead daughter.  Now and then John came and tried to comfort the wretched woman, but in her deepest grief, there was a tender motherly strain which he had not thought of and knew not how to answer.  “Her little feet!  Her little feet, John!  I never let them wander alone or stray even in Hatton streets without a helper and guide.  O John, what hand will lead them upward and back to God?  Those little feet!”

“Her angel would be with her and she would know the way through the constellations.  Together they would pass swift as thought from earth to heaven.  Martha loved God.  They who love God will find their way back to Him, dear Jane.”

The next day there was no factory bell.  Nearly the whole village was massed in Hatton churchyard, and towards sunset the crowd made a little lane for the small white coffin to the open grave waiting for it.  None of the women of the family were present.  They had made their parting in the familiar room that seemed, even at that distracting hour, full of Martha’s dear presence.  But Jane, sitting afterwards at its open window, heard the soft singing of those who went to the grave mouth with the child, and when a little later John and Harry returned together, she knew that all had been.

She did not go to meet them, but John came to her.  “Let me help you, dear one,” he said tenderly.  “One is here who will give you comfort.”

“None can comfort me.  Who is here?”

“The new curate.  He said words at the graveside I shall never forget.  He filled them with such glory that I could not help taking comfort.”

“O John, what did he say?”

“After the service was over, and the people dispersing, he stood talking to Harry and myself, and then he walked up the hill with us.  I asked him for your sake.”