"No, no; I don't think so. It wouldn't--wouldn't do any good, and the sight of any one dead always upsets me. No, I don't think I'll see her; I only--only called in case I could do anything. A man needs sympathy at such a time." He got up and took his hat, and swung toward the door. Turning there, he said abruptly, "What about the kid?" "The----" said David, looking at him blankly. "The child; is it alive?" "Yes," replied David; "doing well, they tell me." "Ah--that's bad--for you, I mean." He paused a moment, coughed uncomfortably, and stuck his hat sideways on his head; then remembered himself, and took it off and frowned at it. Finally he got out of the door awkwardly, and swung himself out through the garden of the roses and went up the street, trying hard not to whistle. It was on the day of the funeral that David Willis first seemed to grasp the idea of his responsibility in regard to his infant son. He had had no thought of that before; had listened to the sympathizing remarks of the few friends he had with indifference, and had scarcely appeared to realize that there was a new element in his life at all. He grasped things slowly at all times, and required time to digest them; he had room for nothing else in his mind then but the thought of his loss. The day that saw her committed to the earth in the old churchyard within sight of the garden where she had walked was a day which passed for him like a troubled dream; he had a vague remembrance that people were very kind to him, and helped him, and told him what to do and where to stand. It was while he stood beside the grave that some words from the burial service broke upon his ears as though nothing had been said before; he saw in them something new and fresh and hopeful. "Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and----" He lost all that followed; with those final words came a new thought into his mind. The woman he had loved, for whom he had waited and hungered so patiently, was to sleep her last sleep in that quiet place, to sleep as calmly and as gently as she had lived. But there was something more than this, something to comfort him. God had, after all, been very merciful; so, in his simple mind, he told himself. The poor, frail woman was gone; in her place had come a little child. The words were true; he applied them at once to the baby. "He cometh up--like a flower." Surely that was true; his eyes brightened as he thought of it; the bitterness fell away from his heart; he almost longed to leave her sleeping there and to get back to the child. He scarcely seemed to have seen the child yet--to know what it was like.