At midnight Naomi Holland opened her eyes.  The child she had never loved was the only one to go with her to the brink of the Unseen.

“Eunice—­remember!”

It was the faintest whisper.  The soul, passing over the threshold of another life, strained back to its only earthly tie.  A quiver passed over the long, pallid face.

A horrible scream rang through the silent house.  Sarah Spencer sprang out of her doze in consternation, and gazed blankly at the shrieking child.  Caroline came hurrying in with distended eyes.  On the bed Naomi Holland lay dead.

In the room where she had died Naomi Holland lay in her coffin.  It was dim and hushed; but, in the rest of the house, the preparations for the funeral were being hurried on.  Through it all Eunice moved, calm and silent.  Since her one wild spasm of screaming by her mother’s death-bed she had shed no tear, given no sign of grief.  Perhaps, as her mother had said, she had no time.  There was Christopher to be looked after.  The boy’s grief was stormy and uncontrolled.  He had cried until he was utterly exhausted.  It was Eunice who soothed him, coaxed him to eat, kept him constantly by her.  At night she took him to her own room and watched over him while he slept.

When the funeral was over the household furniture was packed away or sold.  The house was locked up and the farm rented.  There was nowhere for the children to go, save to their uncle’s.  Caroline Holland did not want them, but, having to take them, she grimly made up her mind to do what she considered her duty by them.  She had five children of her own and between them and Christopher a standing feud had existed from the time he could walk.

She had never liked Naomi.  Few people did.  Benjamin Holland had not married until late in life, and his wife had declared war on his family at sight.  She was a stranger in Avonlea,—­a widow, with a three year-old child.  She made few friends, as some people always asserted that she was not in her right mind.

Within a year of her second marriage Christopher was born, and from the hour of his birth his mother had worshiped him blindly.  He was her only solace.  For him she toiled and pinched and saved.  Benjamin Holland had not been “fore-handed” when she married him; but, when he died, six years after his marriage, he was a well-to-do man.

Naomi made no pretense of mourning for him.  It was an open secret that they had quarreled like the proverbial cat and dog.  Charles Holland and his wife had naturally sided with Benjamin, and Naomi fought her battles single-handed.  After her husband’s death, she managed to farm alone, and made it pay.  When the mysterious malady which was to end her life first seized on her she fought against it with all the strength and stubbornness of her strong and stubborn nature.  Her will won for her an added year of life, and then she had to yield.  She tasted all the bitterness of death the day on which she lay down on her bed, and saw her enemy come in to rule her house.