"What a grand and splendid man you had become, Henry! and I may toy with and caress you now, as when you were a soft and beautiful baby, and you will permit me!" and lifting herself up, she steadfastly gazed at his emaciated face and shrunken temples, and opening his bosom, and baring its broad and finely-formed contour, she scanned it closely. "Oh, why could not I see and know, and be warned! I thought he could not die! Oh, I thought that all I had would remain! that in their father God had taken all he would reclaim from me! that I should go, and together we should adorn a place where they should come to us! Oh, Merciful Father!" and the storm of agony, such as uproots and sweeps away weak natures, came upon her. As for Barton, his sensibilities were stunned and paralyzed, while his mind was left to work free and clear. All his anguish was for his mother; for himself, the moment had not come. He was appalled to feel the almost indifference with which he looked upon the remains of his manly and high-souled brother, and he repeated over and over to himself: "Henry is dead! he is dead! Don't you hear? don't you know? He is dead! Why don't you mourn?" An hour later, came a gentle tap at the door. Barton went to find Mrs. Hitchcock standing there. "Your mother must be aroused and taken away. My mother and I will take you to her house. She must be cared for now." "Mother," said Bart, taking her lightly in his arms, "these dear good ladies must care for you. Let me take you out; and our dear Henry must be cared for, too." How unnatural his voice sounded to him! Had he slain his brother, that he should care so little?--that his voice should sound so hoarse and hollow? His mother was passive in his hands,--wearied, broken, and overwhelmed. He carried her across a small open space, and into a large house, where her kind hostess received and cherished her as only women experienced and chastened by sorrow can. Barton was conducted to a spacious, cool room, luxurious to his eyes; yet he felt no weariness, but somehow supernaturally strained up to an awful tension. "Why don't I shriek, and tear my hair, and make some fitting moan over this awful loss? Why can't I feel it? O God! am I a wretch without nature, or heart, or soul? He is dead! Why should he die, and now, plucked and torn up by the root, just at flowering? What a vile economy is this! what a waste and incompleteness! and the world full of drivellers and dotards, that it would gladly be quit of. Wasn't there space and breath for him? Why should such qualities be so bestowed, to be so wasted? Why kindle such a light, to quench it so soon in the dark river? What a blunder! Why was not I taken?" Why? Oh, weak, vain questioner!