d scraping outside, and a crowd came solemnly in, with
heads uncovered, and laid the two drowned bodies on the bed.

"Oh, my God!" that poor mother cried out, and fell on her knees, and put
her arms about her dead boy and began to cover the wet face with kisses.
"Oh, it was I that sent him, and I have been his death. If I had obeyed,
and kept him in the house, this would not have happened. And I am
rightly punished; I was cruel to him last night, and him begging me, his
own mother, to be his friend."

And so she went on and on, and all the women cried, and pitied her, and
tried to comfort her, but she could not forgive herself and could not
be comforted, and kept on saying if she had not sent him out he would be
alive and well now, and she was the cause of his death.

It shows how foolish people are when they blame themselves for anything
they have done. Satan knows, and he said nothing happens that your first
act hasn't arranged to happen and made inevitable; and so, of your own
motion you can't ever alter the scheme or do a thing that will break
a link. Next we heard screams, and Frau Brandt came wildly plowing and
plunging through the crowd with her dress in disorder and hair flying
loose, and flung herself upon her dead child with moans and kisses and
pleadings and endearments; and by and by she rose up almost exhausted
with her outpourings of passionate emotion, and clenched her fist and
lifted it toward the sky, and her tear-drenched face grew hard and
resentful, and she said:

"For nearly two weeks I have had dreams and presentiments and warnings
that death was going to strike what was most precious to me, and day and
night and night and day I have groveled in the dirt before Him praying
Him to have pity on my innocent child and save it from harm--and here is
His answer!"

Why, He had saved it from harm--but she did not know.

She wiped the tears from her eyes and cheeks, and stood awhile gazing
down at the child and caressing its face and its hair with her hands;
then she spoke again in that bitter tone: "But in His hard heart is no
compassion. I will never pray again."

She gathered her dead child to her bosom and strode away, the crowd
falling back to let her pass, and smitten dumb by the awful words they
had heard. Ah, that poor woman! It is as Satan said, we do not know good
fortune from bad, and are always mistaking the one for the other. Many
a time since I have heard people pray to God to spare the