rt of the
humble. That was all. And I fancy that the shade of the grim old
robber, lurking somewhere in the softly coloured gloom of the chancel,
was not altogether averse to the farce in which his earthly tabernacle
was engaged....

When Dick Slade died in the big red tenement of Box Street, he died as
other men die, complaining of the necessity; and his son, in the way of
all tender children, sorely wept: not because his father was now lost
to him, which was beyond his comprehension, but because the man must be
put in a grave--a cold place, dark and suffocating, being underground,
as the child had been told.

"I don't want my father," he woefully protested, "to be planted!"

"Planted!" cried the mother, throwing up her hands in indignant denial.
"Who told you he'd be planted?"

"Madame Lacara."

"She's a liar," said the woman, composedly, without resentment. "We'll
cut the _planting_ out of _this_ funeral." Her ingenuity, her
resourcefulness, her daring, when the happiness of her child was
concerned, were usually sufficient to the emergency. "Why, darling!"
she exclaimed. "Your father will be taken right up into the sky. He
won't be put in no grave. He'll go right straight to a place where
it's all sunshine--where it's all blue and high and as bright as day."
She bustled about: keeping an eye alert for the effect of her promises.
She was not yet sure how this glorious ascension might be managed; but
she had never failed to deceive him to his own contentment, and 'twas
not her habit to take fainthearted measures. "They been lying to you,
dear," she complained. "Don't you fret about graves. You just wait,"
she concluded, significantly, "and see!"

The boy sighed.

"Poddle and me," she added, with a wag of the head to convince him,
"will show you where your father goes."

"I wish," the boy said, wistfully, "that he wasn't dead."

"Don't you do it!" she flashed. "It don't make no difference to him.
It's a good thing. I bet he's glad to be dead."

The boy shook his head.

"Yes, he is! Don't you think he isn't. There ain't nothing like being
dead. Everybody's happy--when they're dead."

"He's so still!" the boy whispered.

"It feels fine to be still--like that."

"And he's so cold!"

"No!" she scorned. "He don't feel cold. You think he's cold. But he
ain't. That's just what you _think_. He's comfortable. He's glad to
be dead. Everybody's glad to be dead."

The boy shuddered.