I saw his hands clench together feebly here, and then there was no more motion. Presently I looked into his face, and I knew that no sound of my voice, nor any sound of the world, could ever reach him again; for the story of his unspeakable sorrow, like the ruin of Troy, had been told to the end. He had spoken not a single word; he had carried the silence of his soul into the infinite silences of death. The secret of his life had passed with him. I shall probably never know what early dreams and ambitions had faded into this squalid despair. And his pitiful wan-faced boy--who was the child's mother? I am glad I do not know; I am only glad I can tell him of your love. I shall see that the father is buried decently with a wooden slab to distinguish his grave from the innumerable dead who rest in the earth. Might we not print above his body the last words of the poem he seems to have loved so much: _Fugit indignata sub umbras_! For I think it was the indignity of shame in the end that killed him. Is he not now all that Caesar and Virgil are? Shall he not sleep as peacefully in his pauper's bed as the great General Grant in that mausoleum raised by the river's side?--Commonplace thoughts that came to me as I sat for a while musing in the presence of death; but is not death the inevitable commonplace that shall put to rout all our originality in the end? And all the while our Jack was sitting perfectly motionless by the window, looking out into the court--into the blue sky, I think. I picked up one of his thin hands and said to him: "Little Jack, your father has gone away from us and is at rest. There is a beautiful lady in the South who loves you as she loves me; will not her love make you happy?" He did not appear to understand me, but shrank into himself as if afraid. Indeed, sweet benefactress, I shall send him into the country somewhere as you bid me, and I shall see that your love brings him greater happiness than it has brought me, for with him you shall not withdraw with one hand what you have held out in the other.