"See where he is," she said in a voice of piercing earnestness, and with her other hand she lifted a handkerchief from the little white face. Hugh Ritson shuddered. He saw his own features as if memory had brought them in an instant from the long past. Mercy disengaged her hand, and silently hid her face. But she did not weep. "My little Ralphie," she said, plaintively, "how quiet he is now! Oh, but you should have seen him when he was like a glistening ray of morning light. Why did you not come before?" Hugh Ritson stood there looking down at the child's dead face, and made no answer. "It is better as it is," his heart whispered at that moment. The next instant his whole frame quivered. What was the thought that had risen unbidden within him? Better that his child should lie there cold and lifeless than that it should fill this desolate house with joy and love? Was he, then, so black a villain? God forbid! Yet it was better so. "All is over now," said Mercy, and her hands fell from her face. She turned her weary eyes full upon him, and added: "We have been punished already." "Punished?" said Hugh. "We?" There was silence for a moment; and then, dropping his voice until it was scarcely audible, he said: "Your burden is heavy to bear, my poor girl." Her slight figure swayed a little. "I could bear it no longer," she answered. "Many a one has thought that before you," he said; "but God alone knows what we can not bear until we are tried." "Well, all is over now," she repeated listlessly. She spoke of herself as if her days were already ended and past; as if her orb of life had been rounded by the brief span of the little existence that lay finished upon the bed. Hugh Ritson looked at her, and the muscles of his face twitched. Her weary eyes were still dry; their dim light seemed to come from far away. "How I prayed that I might see my Ralphie," she said. "I thought surely God had willed it that I should never see my child. Perhaps that was to be my punishment for--all that had taken place. But I prayed still. Oh, you would not think how much I pray! But it must have been a wicked prayer." She hid her face once more in her hands, and added, with unexpected animation: "God heard my prayer, and answered it--but see!" She pointed to the child. "I saw him--yes, I saw him--die!" Hugh Ritson was moved, but his heart was bitter. At that moment he cursed the faith that held in bondage the soul of the woman at his side. Would that he could trample it underfoot, and break forever the chains by which it held the simple. "Hugh," she said, and her voice softened, "we are about to part forever. Our little Ralphie--yours and mine--he calls me. I could not live without him. God would not make me do that. He has punished me already, and He is merciful. Only think, our Ralphie is in heaven!" She paused and bit her lip, and drew her breath audibly inward. Her face took then a death-like hue, and all at once her voice overflowed with anguish.