the mown grass into fragrant cocks or tossing it into heavily
laden carts. Dead! With the brooks tinkling after the summer
showers, with the potatoes and corn blossoming, the birds singing
for joy, and every little insect humming and chirping, adding its
note to the blithe chorus of warm, throbbing life.

"I was all alone with her. She passed away suddenly jest about
break o' day," said Lizy Ann Dennett.

"Her soul passed upward to its God Just at the break of day."

These words came suddenly into Rebecca's mind from a tiny chamber
where such things were wont to lie quietly until something
brought them to the surface. She could not remember whether she
had heard them at a funeral or read them in the hymn book or made
them up "out of her own head," but she was so thrilled with the
idea of dying just as the dawn was breaking that she scarcely
heard Mrs. Dennett's conversation.

"I sent for Aunt Beulah Day, an' she's be'n here an' laid her
out," continued the long suffering Lizy Ann. "She ain't got any
folks, an' John Winslow ain't never had any as far back as I can
remember. She belongs to your town and you'll have to bury her
and take care of Jacky--that's the boy. He's seventeen months
old, a bright little feller, the image o' John, but I can't keep
him another day. I'm all wore out; my own baby's sick, mother's
rheumatiz is extry bad, and my husband's comin' home tonight from
his week's work. If he finds a child o' John Winslow's under his
roof I can't say what would happen; you'll have to take him back
with you to the poor farm."