irred. And old
Karen was there, moving about on some trifling errand of duty;
but her quick nature was under less government; it did not
bear the sight of Winthrop. Dropping or forgetting what she
was about, she came towards him with a bursting cry of
feeling, half for herself, half sympathetic; and with the
freedom of old acquaintance and affection and common grief,
laid her shrivelled black hand on his shoulder and looked up
into his face, saying, almost as his father had done, but with
streaming eyes and quivering lips,

"My dear son! -- she has gone! --"

Winthrop took the hand in his and gave it a moment's pressure,
and then saying very gently but in a way that was obeyed, "Be
quiet Karen," -- he passed her and stood at his mother's
bedside.

She was there -- lying quietly in her last sleep. Herself and
not another. All of her that _could_ write and leave its
character on features of clay, was shewn there still -- in its
beauty. The brow yet spoke the calm good sense which had
always reigned beneath it; the lines of toil were on the
cheek; the mouth had its old mingling of patience and hope and
firm dignity -- the dignity of meek assurance which looked both
to the present and the future. It was there now, unchanged,
unlessened; Winthrop read it; that as she had lived, so she
had died, in sure expectation of 'the rest that remaineth.'
Herself and no other! -- ay! that came home too in another
sense, with its hard stern reality, pressing home upon the
heart and brain, till it would have seemed that nature could
not bear it and must give way. But it did not. Winthrop stood
and looked, fixedly and long, so fixedly that no one cared to
interrupt him, but so calmly in his deep gravity that the
standers-by were rather awed than distressed. And at last when
he turned away and Asahel threw himself forward upon his neck,
Winthrop's manner was as firm as it was kind; though he left
them all then and forbade Asahel to follow him.

"The Lord bless him!" said Karen, loosing her tongue then and
giving her tears leave at the same time. "And surely the Lord
has blessed him, or he wouldn't ha' borne up so. She won't
lose that one of her childr'n -- she won't, no she won't! -- I
know she won't! --"

"Where is Winnie, Karen?" said Asahel suddenly.

"Poor soul! -- I dun know," said Karen; -- "she was afeard to
see the Governor come home, and dursn't stop nowheres -- I dun
know where she's hid. -- The Lord bless him! nobody