"Where is your papa?" asked Mr. Porson.

The boy looked round bewildered.

"Gone," he answered; nor could they get anything more from him.

"Was your papa with you here?" asked Mrs. Porson.

He answered only with the word _Gone_, uttered in a dazed fashion.

By this time all the men left in the town were doing their best, under
the direction of an intelligent man, the priest of a neighbouring
parish. They had already got one or two out alive, and their own
priest dead. They worked well, their terror of the lurking earthquake
forgotten in their eagerness to rescue. From their ignorance of the
language, however, Mr. Porson saw they could be of little use; and in
dread of doing more harm than good, he judged it better to go.

They stood one moment and looked at each other in silence. The child
had dropped from the beam, and lay fast asleep across his mother's
bosom, with his head on a lump of mortar. Without a word spoken,
Mrs. Person, picking her way carefully to the spot, knelt down by the
dead mother, tenderly kissed her cheek, lifted the sleeping child, and
with all the awe, and nearly all the tremulous joy of first
motherhood, bore him to her husband. The throes of the earthquake had
slain the parents, and given the child into their arms. Without look
of consultation, mark of difference, or sign of agreement, they turned
in silence and left the terrible church, with the clear summer sky
looking in upon its dead.