Edward strove tearfully to calm her; it was too late. Calling upon husband and daughter frantically, Mrs. Montjoy rushed from her room into the presence of death. She was blindfolded, but with unerring instinct she found the still form and touched the dead face. The touch revealed the truth; with one quick motion she tore away the bandages from her face, and then in sudden awe the words fell from her: "I am blind!" Mary had risen to her side and was clinging to her, and Edward had assisted, fearing she might fall to the floor. But with the consciousness of her last misfortune had soon come calmness. She heeded not the cries of the girl appealing to her, but knelt with her white face lifted and said simply: "Dear Father, Thou art merciful; I have not seen him dead! Blest forever be Thy Holy name!" Edward turned his back and stood with bowed head, the silence broken now only by the sobs of the daughter. Still sleeping in the lap of the dead, her chubby hand clasping the wonderful toy, was the Duchess, and at her feet the streaming sunlight. The little boy came to the door riding the old man's gold-headed cane for a horse and carrying the cow horn, which he had pushed from its nail upon the porch. "Grandpa, ain't it time to blow the horn?" he said. "Grandma, why don't grandpa wake up?" She drew him to her breast and silenced his queries. And still with a half-smile upon his patrician face--the face that women and children loved and all men honored--sat the colonel; one more leaf from the old south blown to earth. The little girl awoke at last, sat up and caught sight of the watch. "Look, gamma. Little boy in deir cackin' hickeynut," and she placed the jewel against the ear of the kneeling woman. That peculiarly placid expression, driven away in the moment of dissolution, had returned to the dead man; he seemed to hear the Duchess prattle and the familiar demand for music upon the horn. Isham had responded to the outcry and rushed in. With a sob he had stood by the body a moment and then gone out shaking his head and moaning. And then, as they waited, there rang out upon the clear morning air the plantation bell--not the merry call to labor and the sweet summons to rest, which every animal on the plantation knew and loved, but a solemn tolling, significant in its measured volume. And over the distant fields where the hands were finishing their labors, the solemn sounds came floating. Old Peter lifted his head. "Who dat ring dat bell dis time er day?" he said, curiously; and then, under the lessening volume of the breeze, the sound fell to almost silence, to rise again stronger than before and float with sonorous meaning. At long intervals they had heard it. It always marked a change in their lives.