‘She isn’t dead?’ shrieked the poor desolate man, struggling to shake off Mr. Brand, who had taken him by the arm.  But his weary weakened frame was not equal to resistance, and he was dragged out of the room.

Chapter 9

They laid her in the grave—­the sweet mother with her baby in her arms—­while the Christmas snow lay thick upon the graves.  It was Mr. Cleves who buried her.  On the first news of Mr. Barton’s calamity, he had ridden over from Tripplegate to beg that he might be made of some use, and his silent grasp of Amos’s hand had penetrated like the painful thrill of life-recovering warmth to the poor benumbed heart of the stricken man.

The snow lay thick upon the graves, and the day was cold and dreary; but there was many a sad eye watching that black procession as it passed from the vicarage to the church, and from the church to the open grave.  There were men and women standing in that churchyard who had bandied vulgar jests about their pastor, and who had lightly charged him with sin; but now, when they saw him following the coffin, pale and haggard, he was consecrated anew by his great sorrow, and they looked at him with respectful pity.

All the children were there, for Amos had willed it so, thinking that some dim memory of that sacred moment might remain even with little Walter, and link itself with what he would hear of his sweet mother in after years.  He himself led Patty and Dickey; then came Sophy and Fred; Mr. Brand had begged to carry Chubby, and Nanny followed with Walter.  They made a circle round the grave while the coffin was being lowered.  Patty alone of all the children felt that mamma was in that coffin, and that a new and sadder life had begun for papa and herself.  She was pale and trembling, but she clasped his hand more firmly as the coffin went down, and gave no sob.  Fred and Sophy, though they were only two and three years younger, and though they had seen mamma in her coffin, seemed to themselves to be looking at some strange show.  They had not learned to decipher that terrible handwriting of human destiny, illness and death.  Dickey had rebelled against his black clothes, until he was told that it would be naughty to mamma not to put them on, when he at once submitted; and now, though he had heard Nanny say that mamma was in heaven, he had a vague notion that she would come home again tomorrow, and say he had been a good boy and let him empty her work-box.  He stood close to his father, with great rosy cheeks, and wide open blue eyes, looking first up at Mr. Cleves and then down at the coffin, and thinking he and Chubby would play at that when they got home.