For she had been startled from her calm, sweet sleep by the unwonted sounds of heavy footsteps lumbering in at the front door, while over all rose shrill, agonized cries in a woman’s voice--cries of bitter bereavement. CHAPTER XIII. IN THE MESHES OF HER HUNGRY FATE. Floy stood scared and trembling at the head of the stairs, trying to make out what was going on below. She presently recognized that it was the voice of Mrs. Banks, uplifted in those grievous cries, and a conviction of the truth rushed over her mind--something terrible had happened to John Banks. The tender-hearted wife had always been nervous over his trade of house-builder--always forebode an accident. Tears rushed blindingly to Floy’s sweet blue eyes, and her heart sunk heavily as she thought: “Poor, poor auntie! Her life-long presentiments are realized at last.” For what else could be meant by those heavy, lumbering steps down-stairs, and those doleful cries in the little house that was usually so calm and peaceful? She groped with ice-cold fingers for a loose wrapper, threw it over her snowy night-gown, and thrusting her little rosy bare feet into tiny slippers, flew down the stairs. The little front room seemed full of people. There were men in working garb, without their coats, and homely neighbor women with their aprons to their eyes. There was _something_ covered up solemnly on a couch, and beside it Mrs. Banks was kneeling, wringing her hands and filling their sorrowing ears with her doleful cries. Floy rushed to the couch, but an old woman caught and held her back. “It is Uncle John--I know it! Do not tell me he is dead!” she moaned. But it was, alas! too true. He had fallen from a scaffolding on the third story, and death had been instantaneous. The true and tender heart had ceased to beat, the noble nature had passed from earth to its reward in heaven. “It was that dizziness in his head made him miss his footing. I know it. I begged him to stay at home till he was better, but he said they could not spare him, and now he is gone from me forever!” wailed the stricken widow. And by the couch of death she and Floy mingled their anguished tears together, both so bitterly bereaved of their loved one and their only supporter. For when the first days of grief had passed, and their dead had been laid away to rest in the grave-yard beneath the sweet spring flowers, these two, the lonely woman and the helpless girl, had to look the future in the face. The faithful hands that had toiled for them, the loving heart that had shielded them, these, alas! were no more, and grim poverty stalked into the little cottage now, a guest they could not thrust away.