Once my very own mother, speaking excitedly, too, stopped short when I came in, and though I looked and looked at her with forty-horse questioning power in my eyes, she answered nothing, and my most penetrating and gimlet-like glance finally brought out a very brief, not to say sharp, suggestion that I sit down and stare at my spelling-book awhile--which, like most good advice, was neither kindly given nor willingly followed. So I was worrying, when one morning I stood listening to Miss Linda’s unspeakably sad music. She was playing with fervor and more strength than usual, and suddenly she was seized with a paroxysm of coughing. Instead of going to her at once, I ran into the next room for some troches that were on a table, and before I could return with them she had fallen and was lying motionless on the floor. My cry and the shouts of little Arthur gave the alarm. Mrs. Hyler entered first. She went very white, but she stooped and lifted Linda like a child, and I thought it strange that, as she carried her, she held a handkerchief to her face. Mr. Hyler appearing suddenly, exclaimed in excited tones: “Ice--ice! Salt--linen!” and, taking these exclamations as orders, I ran forward, intending to carry the message to my mother. At that moment Mrs. Hyler stretched out her hand to push the door more widely open, and on the breast of her light dress, just where Miss Linda’s head was resting, a great, red stain was slowly, evilly spreading. I glanced from it to the handkerchief in her hand, and it was red! red!! red!!! With stiffening lips, I whispered: “Miss Linda--oh, Miss Linda!” and suddenly there came a mighty roaring in my ears--a cold air on my face, and as I sank into the windy darkness, afar off I heard a voice cry: “There she goes! Catch the child--ah! she saw it all.” Yes, in very truth I had seen all! And when, with a general sense of discomfort, I opened my eyes upon the sunlight again, I found myself attended by two of the seven sons, who cast water on me with lavish hand and pounded me with an affectionate brutality that left marks by which my fainting might be remembered for days after. I looked stupidly at them at first and wondered, and then I saw that great, red, growing stain beneath the wasted, white face, and I broke into such sobs as fairly frightened them. I was crouching on the top step of the porch, with my feet drawn up and my arms and head resting on my knees, and as I glanced downward I saw four bare, brown, boyish feet, and noted how restless they were. With my heart almost bursting with pain, some portion of my brain made a note of the fact that one of the four great toes before me had received a recent cut that must have been given by a hoe. Then the elder one thumped me kindly on the back and said: “Don’t, Carrie, don’t!”--and the other one said, in a husky voice: “Why, didn’t yo’ never know at all that sister Linda was a-goin’ to die?”