d Checkers, raising his hand to his eyes in a
dazed way, as though to ward off the blow of the Judge's words, the
import of which was all too plain. The Judge laid his hand upon
Checkers' shoulder and drew him toward him, protectingly. "Come," he
said, gently; "she is at my house."

Checkers started as though from a dream. "At your house," he echoed,
"and I have been standing here wasting precious time."

With a sudden bound he jumped to the ground and flew up the street
through the darkness, toward the Judge's house, not many yards away.
Arthur heard the sound of his footsteps, and silently opened the door.
"Upstairs, Checkers," he whispered. Checkers hurried frantically up
the stairs, but paused at the threshold, ere he entered the room.
There before him, by the light of one dim, flickering candle, sat
Sadie, silently weeping. There upon the bed, cold and silent in death,
lay the mortal remains of his sweet girl-wife.

With an agonized cry he fell to his knees at the bedside, and taking
her cold little hand, he rubbed it and kissed it caressingly. "Pert,
my darling," he moaned, "come back to me! Don't leave me, Pert, my
precious one--tell me you won't dear--tell me you hear me!--" But only
the sound of Sadie's convulsive sobbing answered him as she stumbled
from the room.

The long threatened storm now suddenly broke in all its fury. The rain
blew fiercely in at a window near him, and drenched him through and
through with the flying spray; but he heeded it not. Kneeling at the
bedside, his face above the little hand clasped in both of his, he
uttered mingled incoherent prayers to Pert to come back, and to God to
take him too.

Judge Martin noiselessly entered the room and closed the window.
Gently he put a hand under each of Checkers' arms, and raised him up.
"Come, my boy," he said kindly, but firmly, "you must not stay here in
this condition. Try to bear up. It's an awful blow that has come upon
us; but God, in his inscrutable wisdom, has thought it best to take
her--"

Again, with a sudden burst of anguish, as though his very heart had
broken within him, Checkers threw himself to his knees by the bedside,
and burying his face between his outstretched arms, poured out in
bitter, choking sobs, his utter hopeless, despairing misery. So
terrible a strain, however, brought about, in the end, its own results.
Beneficent nature intervened, and toward the morning hours Judge Martin
and Arthur gently li