desolation made in one fatal instant in her home and heart.

They lay there together, both past help, both quite dead. The
child had simply been strangled by the weight of his father's arm
which lay directly across the upturned little throat. But the
father was a victim of the shot they had heard. There was blood
on his breast, and a pistol in his hand.

Suicide! The horrible truth was patent. No wonder they wanted to
hold the young widow back. Her neighbour, Mrs. Saunders, crept in
on tiptoe and put her arms about the swaying, fainting woman; but
there was nothing to say--absolutely nothing.

At least, they thought not. But when they saw her throw herself
down, not by her husband, but by the child, and drag it out from
under that strangling arm and hug and kiss it and call out
wildly for a doctor, the officer endeavoured to interfere and
yet could not find the heart to do so, though he knew the child
was dead and should not, according to all the rules of the
coroner's office, be moved before that official arrived. Yet
because no mother could be convinced of a fact like this, he let
her sit with it on the floor and try all her little arts to
revive it, while he gave orders to the janitor and waited
himself for the arrival of doctor and coroner.

She was still sitting there in wide-eyed misery, alternately
fondling the little body and drawing back to consult its small
set features for some sign of life, when the doctor came, and,
after one look at the child, drew it softly from her arms and
laid it quietly in the crib from which its father had evidently