said the younger lady. "I am Mrs. Hitchcock."

"Your son--" said the elder lady.

"Take me to him at once, I pray you! Let me see him! I am his mother!
Who shall keep me from him?"

"Mother," said Barton, stepping up and placing his hands about her,
"don't you feel it? Henry is dead. I knew it ere we stepped in."

"Dead! who says he is dead? He is not dead!"

"Tell her," said Barton; "she is heroic: let her know the worst."

"Take me to him!" she said, as they remained silent.

Up the stairs, in a dimly-lighted room, past two or three young men,
and a kind neighbor or two, they conducted her; and there, composed
as if in slumber, with his grand head thrown back, and his fine strong
face fully upward, she found her third-born, growing chill in death.
She sprang forward--arrested herself when within a step of him, and
gazed. The light passed from her own eye, and the warmth from her
face; a spasm shook her, and nothing more.

She did not shriek; she did not faint; she made no outcry,--scarcely
a visible sign; but steadily and almost stonily she gazed on her dead,
until the idea of the awful change came fully to her. The chill passed
from her face and manner; and seating herself on the bed,--"You won't
mind me, ladies. You can do no more for him. Leave him to me for a
little;" and she bent over and kissed his pallid lips, and laid her
face tenderly to his, and lifted with her thin fingers the damp masses
of his hair, brown and splendid, like Bart's, but darker, and without
the wave.

"What a grand and splendid man you had become, Henry! and I may toy
with and caress you now, as when you were a soft and beautiful baby,
and you will permit me!" and lifting herself up, she steadfastly gazed
at his emaciated face and shrunken temples, and opening his bosom, and
baring its broad and finely-formed contour, she scanned it closely.

"Oh, why could not I see and know, and be warned! I thought he could
not die! Oh, I thought that all I had would remain! that in their
father God had taken all he would reclaim from me! that I should go,
and together we should adorn a place where they should come to us! Oh,
Merciful Father!" and the storm of agony, such as uproots and sweeps
away weak natures, came upon her.

As for Barton, his sensibilities were stunned and paralyzed, while
his mind was left to work free and clear. All his anguish was for his
mother; for himself, the moment had not come. He was appalled to feel
the almos