The Gold Brick

by Ann S. Stephens

At last the magistrates brought in their verdict. The infant had been murdered by its mother, and she was bound over for trial at the county court.

Mrs. Allen drew a deep breath when the verdict was announced, and that was all the sign she gave. The magistrates retired, leaving the house in charge of the constable. From that hour Katharine Allen was a prisoner and under arrest. Poor soul, she knew nothing about it. The officers walked in and out of her room, but she neither spoke nor looked at them. They stooped over the bed and questioned her persistently, but she took no heed; a regiment might have tramped through that little room and she would not have known it.

All that night Mrs. Allen sat by the little coffin in which the babe lay smiling in its eternal sleep. Nothing but the form of a guard was wanted for those two helpless women, so the man left in charge fell asleep upon the hearth, with his head bowed forward and his feet extended. Thus the night wore on. The grandmother never closed her eyes, and scarcely moved, but a dead numbness was closing around her heart; she began to feel the terrible position in which her child was placed—to feel that the beautiful babe which had crept into her heart, awaking all its pristine tenderness, was nothing but cold death.

As these thoughts crowded to her mind, a world of anguish gathered over that old face, 'till every feature quivered with awakening pain.

As if the anguish of this strong woman had struck some electric spark in the bosom of her child, a faint moan was heard in the next room. But that gray head had fallen forward, and the face was buried in her locked hands. The old woman was trying to pray. But she could not even send up a moan to the Almighty. For that moment she had no faith. The anguish of a great trouble was upon her which shook her whole being; but the tenderness that leads to prayer had not yet descended upon her grief.

Under these awakening feelings, she began to be sensible of all the gloomy surroundings that had helped to oppress her. The tallow candle upon the table was surmounted by a long wick with a death blossom trembling at the top, which smothered half its feeble light. Thus the little coffin was filled with shadows, through which the white face gleamed mournfully.

Mrs. Allen was all alone. The officer sat sleeping soundly in his chair—the young mother lay insensible in the next room. The old woman was, nevertheless, alone, for such companionship was an added misery. She could not endure to sit still with that mournful little face reproaching her from its coffin for its mother's sin; for, as yet, its death took that shape in her mind. She had no courage to get up and search for the snuffers, wherewith that ill-omened crest could be separated from the ungainly wick. An empty cradle stood in one corner of the room. She took the coffin in her arms, and sat it reverently into this cradle, spreading the patchwork coverlet over it, thus removing the pale reality of death from her sight. This done, she sat down by the table, and let the candle smoke on, indifferent to what it revealed, so long as the thing was not death.

It is possible that she may have dropped to sleep after this, for nature was sinking within her; certain it is, her face fell upon the locked hands, while profound quiet reigned for a little time throughout that miserable dwelling.

While her face was bowed thus, a frail figure, clad in white drapery from head to foot, came out of the bedroom and glided up to the table. She wavered in her walk, and leaned both hands on the table, or she must have undoubtedly fallen, in feeble helplessness, to the ground.

Mrs. Allen looked up and saw her daughter, worn and trembling, gazing wistfully upon her.