“You see she was old and infirm, and wan’t fit to work for any body any how; but she had a little gran’child, fresh as a rose-bud, and she did it for her, you see. Well, this morning I harnessed the old gray horse--the black one is lame since Sunday--and reined up at her door, as usual, to get the bundle. I knocked, and nobody came; then I knocked again, then little rose-bud came tip-toeing to the door, with her finger on her pretty lip, so--and whispered, ‘grandma is asleep; she has not woke up this great while.’ So I said--‘You’d better speak to her and say, here’s Zekiel, come for the bundle, cause you know she is partiklar like about sending it.’ So the little rose-bud went up to the bed-side, and said--‘Grandma, here is Zekiel, come for the vests.’ The old lady didn’t say nothing, and rose-bud asked me to speak to her. I went up, and--John Pray--the old lady was stone dead, and how was I going to tell that to little rose-bud?” “You don’t mean to tell me that the child was all alone with the corpse--nobody to see to the poor thing?” asked John. “But I do, though,” said Zekiel; “it was enough to break a body’s heart, and she so innocent like. I never was so put to it in my life, to know what to do. There she had gone and tidied up the kitchen, hung the tea-kettle on the fire as well as she knew how, and sat waiting for her gran’mother to ‘wake up,’ as she called it. How could I tell her she was _dead_? Blast me if I could, to this minute.” “But you didn’t come away and leave her so?” asked John. “No,” replied Zekiel, “for a peddler came in, and little rose-bud ran up, glad-like, to see him; then I beckoned him one side, and told him just how it was, and he turned as white as a turnip, and great big tears rolled down his face, as he took little rose-bud up in his arms and kissed her. Then he told me he was a kind of a relation like, and poor, but that he would take the child and do the best he could by her; and I knew he must be clever, for children are powerful ’cute, and never take to cranky folks, any how--and so I left them, and came blubbering into town. I vow it was enough to make the very stones cry, to see little rose-bud take on so, after the old lady.” * * * * * There was no litigious will to be read, no costly effects to quarrel about, in Lucy Ford’s poor cottage, and yet Golconda’s mines were all too poor to buy the priceless treasures to which the peddler fell heir--Mary’s picture and Mary’s child!