She nervously looked about her. Her beautiful eyes, so pure, so clear, so unshadowed by any knowledge of sin, knew nothing of the misery that had been in the enclosure of these walls. Presently a frail, crooked woman came in, abruptly. Cold and bitter was her gaze: “Why did you not come sooner?” she demanded of Frost, sternly. “It was impossible; am I not in good time?” “Yes, for you a very good time--she is dead,” and a short, quick gasp came from the withered frame. “Do you mean it?” he said, looking at the woman who seemed quite overcome, in spite of her hard, cruel face. “Go and see for yourself,” and she pointed to the room he had entered before. Cherokee stood silent, and bowed, as became the house of mourning. “No, if she is dead, we need not go in,” Frost said, quickly. But the old woman recoiled a step: “I understand you are ashamed of her.” “No, not that, but it is now too late to grant her request.” “I would know it, and it would do no harm for me to know that you could keep your word.” “Then we will go in; you lead the way.” Cherokee hesitated, and the miserable woman, seeing this, cried in sudden excitement: “Is your wife afraid of her, now that she is dead?” Willard Frost, at the mention of wife, started. He had, after all, forgotten to explain that to Cherokee. “Do not heed her wild fancy,” he whispered, as he motioned her to go in front. Instinctively the hag folded her wasted hands; most piteously she raised her bewildered eyes, imploringly, to Cherokee. “Won’t you please go in, for if she can see from the other world to this, she will be pleased.” “If it pleases you, I will go in for your sake.” As they entered the waiting doorway, Frost walked to the low lounge--he was more deeply moved than he cared to show. There, before him, lay the pulseless clay, the features horribly distorted, the hands and limbs terribly drawn. “This,” he said to Cherokee, “was caused by paralysis. Nature was once a kind mother to her.” He shook his head, musingly, and ran his fingers over the sleeper’s hands. At first he did it with a sort of tentativeness, as if waiting for something that eluded him. All at once he leaned over and kissed the hands--he seemed moved by a powerful impulse. Through his mind there ran a thousand incidents of his life, one growing upon the other without sequence; phantasmagoria, out of the scene-house of memory. He saw a vast stretch of lonely forest in the white coverlet of winter, through which a man followed a desolate track. He saw a scanty home, yet mirthful, and warm from the winter wood. Again he saw that home, when even in the summer height it was chilled and blighted. Then, there, he saw a child with red-gold curls, and he wondered how fate would deal with that baby--a laughing, dimpled romper, without a name. These are a few of the pictures he saw. Cherokee, ever gentle in her ministries, spoke kind words to the old woman, whom she supposed was the mother.