e tried to pour a little
of the doctor's medicine into his mouth, but he did not swallow, and
she wiped it away.

"Go an' get Barney to run for the doctor, quick!" she told Caleb at
last. Caleb fled, sobbing aloud like a child, out of the house.
Deborah closed the boy's eyes, and straightened him a little in the
bed. Then she stood over him there, and began to pray aloud. It was a
strange prayer, full of remorse, of awful agony, of self-defense of
her own act, and her own position as the vicar of God upon earth for
her child. "I couldn't let him go astray too!" she shrieked out. "I
couldn't, I couldn't! O Lord, thou knowest that I couldn't! I
would--have lain him upon--the altar, as Abraham laid Isaac! Oh,
Ephraim, my son, my son, my son!"

Deborah prayed on and on. The doctor and a throng of pale women came
in; the yard was full of shocked and staring people. Deborah heeded
nothing; she prayed on.

Some of the women got her into her own room. She stayed there, with a
sort of rigid settling into the spot where she was placed and she
pleaded with the Lord for upholding and justification until the
daylight faded, and all night. The women, Mrs. Ray and the doctor's
wife, who watched with poor Ephraim, heard her praying all night
long. They sat in grave silence, and their eyes kept meeting with
shocked significance as they listened to her. Now and then they wet
the cloth on Ephraim's face. About two o'clock Mrs. Ray tiptoed into
the pantry, and brought forth a mince-pie. "I found one that had been
cut on the top shelf," she whispered. She and the doctor's wife ate
the remainder of poor Ephraim's pie.

The two women stayed next day and assisted in preparations for the
funeral. Deborah seemed to have no thought for any of her household
duties. She stayed in her bedroom most of the time, and her praying
voice could be heard at intervals.

Some other women came in, and they went about with silent efficiency,
performing their services to the dead and setting the house in order;
but they said very little to Deborah. When she came out of her room
they eyed her with a certain grim furtiveness, and they never said a
word to her about Ephraim.

It was already known all over the village that she had been whipping
Ephraim when he died. Poor old Caleb, when the neighbors had come
flocking in, had kept repeating with childish sobs, "Mother hadn't
ought to have whipped him! mother hadn't ought to have whipped him!"

"Did Mrs. Th