“Is she very bad, Father--like the Dean's wife when she had fever?” His father didn't answer. He walked to the end of the room, then turned suddenly as though he had seen something there that terrified him, and hurried from the room. Jeremy, suddenly left alone, had a desperate impulse to scream that someone must come, that he was frightened, that something horrible was in the house. He stood up, staring at the closed door, his face white, his eyes large and full of fear. Then he flung himself down by Hamlet and, taking him by the neck, whispered: “I'm frightened! I'm frightened! Bark or something!... There's someone here!” III Next morning Mrs. Cole was still alive. There had been no change during the night; to-day, the doctor said, would be the critical day. To-day was Sunday, and Mr. Cole took his morning service at his church as usual. He had been up all night; he looked haggard and pale, still wearing that expression as of a man lost in a world that he had always trusted. But he would not fail in his duty. “When two or three are gathered together in my name....” Perhaps God would hear him. It was a day of wonderful heat for May. No one had ever remembered so hot a day at so early a time of year. The windows of the church were open, but no breeze blew through the aisles. The relentless blazing blue of the sky penetrated into the cool shadows of the church, and it was as though the congregation sat there under shimmering glass. The waves of light shifted, rose and fell above the bonnets and hats and bare heads, and all the little choir boys fell asleep during the sermon. The Cole family did not fall asleep. They sat with pale faces and stiff backs staring at their father and thinking about their mother. Mary and Helen were frightened; the house was so strange, everyone spoke in whispers, and, on the way into church, many ladies had asked them how their mother was.