The servants crowded to the spare room, and when their master,
incredulous indeed, yet shocked at the tidings brought him, hastened
to the spot, he found them all in the room, gathered at the foot of
the bed. A little sunlight filtered through the red window-curtains,
and gave a strange pallid expression to the flame of the candle, which
had now burned very low. At first he saw nothing but the group of
servants, silent, motionless, with heads leaning forward, intently
gazing: he had come just in time: another moment and they would have
ruined the lovely sight. He stepped forward, and saw Phosy, half
shrouded in blue, the candle behind illuminating the hair she had
found too rebellious to the brush, and making of it a faint aureole
about her head and white face, whence cold and sorrow had driven all
the flush, rendering it colourless as that upon her arm which had
never seen the light. She had pored on the little face until she knew
death, and now she sat a speechless mother of sorrow, bending in the
dim light of the tomb over the body of her holy infant.

How it was I cannot tell, but the moment her father saw her she looked
up, and the spell of her dumbness broke.

"Jesus is dead," she said, slowly and sadly, but with perfect
calmness. "He is dead," she repeated. "He came too early, and there
was no one up to take care of him, and he's dead--dead--dead!"

But as she spoke the last words, the frozen lump of agony gave way;
the well of her heart suddenly filled, swelled, overflowed; the last
word was half sob, half shriek of utter despair and loss.

Alice darted forward and took the dead baby tenderly from her. The