Three days ago the silence of this house was disturbed by the voices of children, the clatter of their feet, and for the first time in my life I heard Griselda scream. "Oh, Mr. Randolph," she rushed in, sobbing, with the dry tearless sobs of those much acquainted with grief, "Miss Laura—she—the children are here!" I knew. Though inwardly I sank all but lifeless under the blow, I knew clearly that Laura was dead. "Is she very ill?" I heard myself asking faintly, with a clutching desire to shrink still from the appalling truth. "She—oh, Mr. Randolph,’" she lamented, "don’t you understand—ye know very well!" she suddenly added with a harshness that surprised me. "We shall have to put the children to bed in your bedroom." It was as though she had suddenly revolted at the softness of the atmosphere in my environment, at any artificiality or evasion. She seemed abruptly determined to face the stark facts in the open. "The girl will sleep with me," she concluded tonelessly and turned to go. "Which girl?" I queried dazedly. "Her that brought the bairns," she replied and left me. "Send her in here—I want to speak to her!" I shouted after Griselda. I could not face the thought of going out there. I was held to my chair by a sheer pitiful lack of courage to move into the dreadful gulf before me. I closed my eyes and endeavored to still the tumult in my brain into silence. I wanted to think. But only those can achieve silence who do not need it. I could not. I opened my eyes. A thin little girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen stood before me. This surely could not be the girl Griselda had referred to in charge of the children. She was herself a child. Were my disordered senses tricking me? I experienced the thrill Poe’s hero must have felt at sight of the raven on the bust of Pallas. "Who are you?" I whispered. "I am Alicia, sir," she answered with large, frightened gray eyes fastened upon mine. "What—what is it?" I stammered. "The lady said you wanted to see me." "Did you bring the children?" I breathed, incredulous. "Yes, sir." I was awestruck. Her eyes, were the eyes of a child yet they were filled with sorrow and a searching fear old as the world. "How old are you?" I could not help asking, with an irrelevance foolish enough in the circumstances. "Going on fourteen, sir." "And you—you are the nurse?" "I helped Mrs. Pendleton with the children before school and after school," she answered with more assurance now, but still uneasy. "I am a mother’s helper, sir." There was no mirth in my soul, but the muscles contorted my features into a sickly grin. "I see," I murmured mendaciously. But I saw only my own confused turpitude at my blindness and neglect in face of the shifts and needs poor Laura had been compelled to suffer. "Where do you come from?" I inquired with a dry throat, ashamed to ask anything of importance.