Frank and Laura remembered the strangeness of that day all their
lives. How they sat, shy and silent, while Luclarion brought in cake
and wine; how Mrs. Oferr sat in the large morocco easy-chair and
took some; and Mrs. Oldways lifted Laura, great girl as she was,
into her lap first, and broke a slice for her; how Mrs. Oldways went
up-stairs to Mrs. Lake, and then down into the kitchen to do
something that was needed; and Mrs. Oferr, after she had visited her
brother, lay down in the spare chamber for a nap, tired with her
long journey from New York, though it had been by boat and cars,
while there was a long staging from Homesworth down to Nashua, on
Mrs. Oldways' route. Mrs. Oldways, however, was "used," she said,
"to stepping round." It was the sitting that had tired her.

How they were told not to go out any more, or to run up and
down-stairs; and how they sat in the front windows, looking out
through the green slats at so much of the street world as they could
see in strips; how they obtained surreptitious bits of bread from
dinner, and opened a bit of the sash, and shoved out crumbs under
the blinds for the pigeons that flew down upon the sidewalk; how
they wondered what kind of a day it was in other houses, where there
were not circumstances in the family, where children played, and
fathers were not ill, but came and went to and from their stores;
and where two aunts had not come, both at once, from great ways off,
to wait for something strange and awful that was likely to befall.

When they were taken in, at bedtime, to kiss their father and say
good-night, there was something portentous in the stillness there;
in the look of the sick man, raised high against the pillows, and
turning his eyes wistfully toward them, with no slightest movement
of the head; in the waiting aspect of all things,--the appearance as
of everybody being to sit up all night except themselves.

Edward Shiere brought his children close to him with the magnetism
of that look; they bent down to receive his kiss and his good-night,
so long and solemn. He had not been in the way of talking to them
about religion in his life. He had only insisted on their truth and
obedience; that was the beginning of all religion. Now it was given
him in the hour of his death what he should speak; and because he
had never said many such words to them before, they fell like the
very touch of the Holy Ghost upon their young spirits now,--

"Love God, and keep