ne mad in this
flood, that Dr. Dunlap, for a mere political feud, should seek out
Monsieur Reece Zhone in my father's house, and shoot him down before our
eyes? I am dazed. It is like a nightmare."

Peggy set her mouth and looked abroad into the brightening night.

Angelique dropped her face in her hands and shook with sobbing. The
three girlish figures, one rigid on the bed, another rigid in the chair,
and the third bending in vicarious suffering between them, were made
suddenly clear by an illumination of the moon as it began to find the
western window. Wachique had busied herself seeking among piles of
furniture for candles, which she considered a necessity for the dead.
The house supply of wax tapers was in the submerged cellar. So she took
the lantern from its nail and set it on the floor at the head of the two
pallets, and it threw scattered spots of lustre on Rice's white forehead
and Maria's hair. This humble shrouded torch, impertinent as it looked
when the lily-white moonlight lay across it, yet reminded beholders of a
stable, and a Child born in a stable who had taught the race to turn
every sorrow into glory.

The night sent its quiet through the attic, though the bells which had
clamored so over the destruction of verdure and homes appeared now to
clamor louder over the destruction of youth.

"Do you understand this, Peggy? They died heretic and unblessed, yet I
want to know what they now know until it seems to me I cannot wait. When
I have been playing the harp to tante-gra'mere, and thinking so much,
long, long afternoons, such a strange homesickness has grown in me. I
could not make anybody believe it if I told it. These two have found out
what is beyond. They have found out the great secret. Oh, Peggy, I do
want to know it, also. There will be an awful mourning over them; and
when they go into their little earthen cellars, people will pity that,
and say, 'Poor things.' But they know the mystery of the ages now, and
we know nothing. Do you think they are yet very far away? Monsieur
Reece? Mademoiselle?"

Angelique's low interrogating call, made while she keenly listened with
lifted face, had its only response in a mutter from Wachique, who feared
any invocation of spirits. Peggy sat looking straight ahead of her
without a word. She could not wash her face soft with tears, and she
felt no reaching out towards disembodiment. What she wanted was love in
this world, and pride in her love; long years of