knew that mother had passed beyond my reach.

As he gripped my hand I perceived that he was smitten but unbowed. He
was taking his orders like a soldier, without complaint or
question.--Only when Zulime kissed him did he give way.

As we entered the gate I perceived with a pang of dread the wheeled
chair, standing empty on the porch, pathetic witness of the one who had
no further need of it. Within doors, the house showed the disorder, the
desolate confusion, the terror which death had brought. The furniture
was disarranged--the floor muddy, and in the midst of the chill little
parlor rested a sinister, flower-strewn box. In this was all that
remained of Isabel McClintock, my mother.

For a few minutes I stood looking about me, a scalding blur in my eyes,
a choking in my throat. The south room, _her_ room, was empty,
intolerably, accusingly empty. The gentle, gray-haired figure was no
longer in its place before the window. The smiling lips which had so
often touched my cheek on my return were cold. The sweet, hesitant voice
was forever silent.

Her dear face I did not see. I refused to look upon her in her coffin. I
wanted to remember her as she appeared when I said good-by to her that
bright October evening, her white hair gleaming in the light of the
lamp, while soft curves about her lips suggested a beautiful serenity.
How patient and loving she had been! Even though she feared that she
might never see us again she had sent us away in cheerful
self-sacrifice.

Father was composed but tense. He went about his duties with solemn
resignation, and, an hour or two later, he said to me, "You and I must
go down and select a burial lot, a place for your mother and me."

It was a desolate November morning, raw and gloomy, but the gray sky and
the patient, bare-limbed elms were curiously medicinal to my sore heart.
In some strange way they comforted me. Snow was in the air and father
mechanically weather-wise, said, without thinking of the bitter irony of
his words--"Regular Thanksgiving weather."

Thanksgiving weather! Yes, but what Thanksgiving could there be for him
or for me, now?

* * * * *

The day of the funeral was still more savagely cold and bleak, and I
resented its pitiless gloom. The wind which blew over the open grave of
my dead mother was sinister as hate, and the snow which fell,
intolerably stern. I turned away. I could not see that box lowered into
the merciless soil