"You need n't go," she announced calmly. "He is dead." "Dead!" echoed her son. "Dead!" cried Hannah shrilly. "Yes," Sarah responded, with increasing calmness. "He had one of his paroxysms. The doctor said he'd go off in one of them. You'd better go to Miss Edith and tell her." Hannah rose from her chair as if the feebleness of age had come upon her suddenly. "The doctor said he must n't be excited," she quavered. "Did he know George was here?" The son, who had half turned away, wheeled back again. "Was that what killed him?" he demanded. Old Sarah straightened herself with a supreme effort. The very strain of uttering a falsehood and of the dreadful secret which must darken her soul for the rest of her life gave to her words an added air of sincerity. "He did n't know," she said. "He went off as peaceful as a child." Her son waited for nothing more, but once more hastened down the river-path. Hannah stood as if transfixed. "But, Sarah," she said, "I heard--" Sarah looked at her with a wild regard. For a moment was silence. "No," she said, "you heard nothing. He did not say it!" She leaned against the doorpost and looked at her right hand strangely, as if she expected to see blood on it. Then she stood erect again, squaring her shoulders as if to a burden accepted. "Be still," she said. "They're coming." Mechanically old Hannah, bowed and bewildered, began to do up her knitting in the fading autumnal afternoon. "It is growing chilly," she muttered shiveringly. A COMEDY IN CRAPE "For my part," observed Mrs. Sterns stoutly, turning the seam of the flannel shirt she was making for some unknown soldier, "I don't believe any one of the three was ever really engaged to Archie Lovell. He went round with all of them some, of course; but that was n't anything--with him." A murmur from the group about her told at least of sympathy with her point of view, and assent showed itself in the remark with which Mrs. Small continued the conversation. "It's awful easy for a girl to put on mourning when a man's dead, and say she's been engaged to him; but if any one of 'em had been engaged to Archie Lovell while he was alive, she'd have bragged enough of it at the time."