With a motion of her hand she prevented them coming
closer to the dead child, and then by an imperative utterance of the
word, "_Go_," sent them from the room. With her own hand she laid
Martha in her last bed and disposed its one garment about the rigid
little limbs. She neither spoke nor wept for Ah! in her sad soul she
knew that never day or night or man or God could bring her child back to
her. And she remembered that once she had said in an evil moment that
this dear, dead child was "one too many." Would God ever forgive her?
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.
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