eding under the blow, had righted
itself, and the sweet influence of faith and hope was coming up in
her heart. She saw Barton with his pallid face, and steady but bright
eyes. She knew that she never quite understood, had never quite
fathomed, his nature.

Gentle voices, assuaging hands, and sweet charities were about the
stricken ones; and pious hands, with all Christian observances,
ministered to their beautiful dead. Nothing more could be done; and
before mid-day Barton, with his mother, started on their return, to
be followed at evening by the remains of the loved one, arrayed for
sepulture.

Barton, with every faculty of mind intensely strong and clear, and
weighted with the great calamity to absolute gravity, had struck those
he met as a marvel of clear apprehension and perception of all the
surroundings and proprieties of his painful position. The younger
members of the Painesville Bar, who had begun to know and love their
young brother, had gathered about him in his illness, and now came
forward to take charge of and prepare his remains for final rest, and
to render to his friends the kindness of refined charity. Barton knew
that somehow they looked curiously at him, as he introduced himself to
them, and fancied that his dazed and dreamy manner was singular; but
knew that such considerate and kind, such brotherly young men, would
make allowances for him.

When they gathered silently to take leave, he turned: "Gentlemen, you
know our obligations to you. Think of the most grateful expression
of them, and think I would so express them if I could. Some day I may
more fittingly thank you."

They thought he never could. He remembered the fitting words to Mrs.
Hitchcock and her mother, Mrs. Marshall, and drove away, with his
pale, silent mother.

All the way home in a dream. Something awful had happened, and it was
not always clear what it was, or how it had been brought about.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE STORM.

About midnight the Painesville hearse drove up, accompanied by the
four young pall-bearers, of the Painesville Bar, who attended the
remains of their young brother. The coffin was deposited in the little
parlor, and the carriages drove to Parker's for the night.

The stricken and lonely mother was in the sanctity of her own room.
The children had cried themselves to sleep and forgetfulness. The
brother, who had been sent for, could not reach home until the next
morning.

Barton had declined th