Such was the outline of their position; and, that being explained, what I saw was simply this: it composed a silent and symbolic scene, a momentary interlude in dumb show, which interpreted itself, and settled forever in my recollection, as if it had prophesied and interpreted the event which soon followed. They were resting from toil, and both sitting down. This had lasted for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes. Suddenly from below stairs the voice of angry summons rang up to their ears. Both rose, in an instant, as if the echoing scourge of some avenging Tisiphone were uplifted above their heads; both opened their arms; flung them round each other's necks; and then, unclasping them, parted to their separate labors. This was my last rememberable interview with the two sisters; in a week both were corpses. They had died, I believe, of scarlatina, and very nearly at the same moment. * * * * * But surely it was no matter for grief, that the two scrofulous idiots were dead and buried. O, no! Call them idiots at your pleasure, serfs or slaves, strulbrugs [19] or pariahs; _their_ case was certainly not worsened by being booked for places in the grave. Idiocy, for any thing I know, may, in that vast kingdom, enjoy a natural precedency; scrofula and leprosy may have some mystic privilege in a coffin; and the pariahs of the upper earth may form the aristocracy of the dead. That the idiots, real or reputed, were at rest,--that their warfare was accomplished,--might, if a man happened to know enough, be interpreted as a glorious festival. The sisters were seen no more upon staircases or in bed rooms, and deadly silence had succeeded to the sound of continual uproars. Memorials of _them_ were none surviving on earth. Not _they_ it was that furnished mementoes of themselves. The mother it was, the father it was--that mother who by persecution had avenged the wounds offered to her pride; that father, who had tolerated this persecution; she it was, he it was, that by the altered glances of her haunted eye, that by the altered character of his else stationary habits, had revived for me a spectacle, once real, of visionary twin sisters, moving forever up and down the stairs--sisters, patient, humble, silent, that snatched convulsively at a loving smile, or loving gesture, from a child, as at some message of remembrance from God, whispering to them, "You are not forgotten"--sisters born apparently for the single purpose of suffering, whose trials, it is true, were over, and could not be repeated, but (alas for her who had been their cause!) could not be recalled. Her face grew thin, her eye sunken and hollow, after the death of her daughters; and, meeting her on the staircase, I sometimes fancied that she did not see me so much as something beyond me. Did any misfortune befall her after this double funeral? Did the Nemesis that waits upon the sighs of children pursue