believe he loved
me better than anything on earth, for he took immense pains and trouble
in teaching me, and what he taught me I have never forgotten. Perhaps
it was his only amusement, and that may be the reason why I had no
nursery governess or teacher of any kind while he lived.

I used to be taken to see my mother every day, and sometimes twice a
day, for an hour at a time. Then I sat upon a little stool near her
feet, and she would ask me what I had been doing, and what I wanted to
do. I dare say she saw already the seeds of a profound melancholy in
my nature, for she looked at me always with a sad smile, and kissed me
with a sigh when I was taken away.

One night, when I was just six years old, I lay awake in the nursery.
The door was not quite shut, and the Welsh nurse was sitting sewing in
the next room. Suddenly I heard her groan, and say in a strange voice,
"One--two--one--two!" I was frightened, and I jumped up and ran to the
door, barefooted as I was.

"What is it, Judith?" I cried, clinging to her skirts. I can remember
the look in her strange dark eyes as she answered:

"One--two leaden coffins, fallen from the ceiling!" she crooned,
working herself in her chair. "One--two--a light coffin and a heavy
coffin, falling to the floor!"

Then she seemed to notice me, and she took me back to bed and sang me
to sleep with a queer old Welsh song.

I do not know how it was, but the impression got hold of me that she
had meant that my father and mother were going to die very soon. They
died in the very room where she had been sitting that night. It was a
great room, my day nursery, full of sun when there was any; and when
the days were dark it was the most cheerful place in the house. My
mother grew rapidly worse, and I was transferred to another part of the
building to make place for her. They thought my nursery was gayer for
her, I suppose; but she could not live. She was beautiful when she was
dead, and I cried bitterly.

"The light one, the light one--the heavy one to come," crooned the
Welshwoman. And she was right. My father took the room after my
mother was gone, and day by day he grew thinner and paler and sadder.

"The heavy one, the heavy one--all of lead," moaned my nurse, one night
in December, standing still, just as she was going to take away the
light after putting me to bed. Then she took me up again and wrapped
me in a little gown, and led me away to my father's room. She kno