I shrank from the meeting with Mrs. Trescott and Josie, more, I think, than if it had been Bill's death which I was to announce. As I approached the house, I got from it, somehow, the impression that it was a place of night-long watchfulness; and I was not surprised by the fact that before I had time to ring or knock at the door Mrs. Trescott herself opened it, with an expression on her face which spoke of long vigils, and of fear passing on to certainty. She peered past me for an expected Something on the street. Her leisure and its new habits had assimilated her in dress and make-up to the women of the wealthier sort in the city; but there was an immensity of trouble in the agonized eye and the pitiful droop of her mouth, which I should have rejoiced to see exchanged again for the ill-groomed exterior and the old fret of the farm. Her first question ignored all reference to the things leading to my being there, "in the dead vast and middle of the night," but went past me to the core of her trouble, as her eye had gone on from me to the street, in the search for the thing she dreaded. "Where is he, Mr. Barslow?" said she, in a hushing whisper; "where is he?" "He is a little sick," said I, "and Mr. Elkins is bringing him home. I came on to tell you." "Then he is not--" she went on, still in that hushed voice, and searching me with her gaze. "No, I assure you!" I answered. "He is in no immediate danger, even." Josie came quietly forward from the dusk of the room beyond, where I saw she had been listening, reminding me, in spite of the incongruity of the idea, of that time when she emerged from the obscurity of her garden, and stood at the foot of the windmill tower, leaning on her father's arm, her hands filled with petunias, the night we first visited the Trescott farm. And then my mind ran back to that other night when she had thrown herself into his arms and begged him to take her away; and he had said, "W'y, yes, little gal, of course I'll take yeh away, if yeh don't like it here!" I think that I, perhaps, was more nearly able than any one else in the world beside herself to gauge her grief at this long death in which she was losing him, and he himself.