The old woman's face was bloodless as parchment. She tried to go on with her work, but it fell from her hands, while she, unconscious of the loss, kept on with the motion of knitting, and looked down with her heavy black eyes as if she were counting the stitches that were only made in air.
"Mother, dear mother!"
The old lady did not speak, but the two hands dropped heavily in her lap, and her face fell down upon her bosom. The stillness of her grief was appalling. Katharine knelt before her, pale as death.
"Ob, mother, speak to me!"
All at once the old woman sat upright.
"Katharine Allen, tell me word for word what that man said to you of my son David."
"Be composed, don't look so hard, and I will—you shake so, mother."
"No, I do not shake. Pick up that knitting needle. There, do I knit evenly?" She placed the needle in its sheath, and began taking her stitches with slow precision.
True enough, her nerves were braced like steel, and like steel were her features locked. Katharine, poor soul, repeated what Thrasher had told her of the shipwreck, faithfully; softening it with the sweet tenderness of her voice, and putting in a word of excuse here and there. Then she came to the end, and told how that little boy and his noble slave insisted upon staying with Rice, after they had been saved from the very jaws of death—a terrible death—like that which threatened him.
Now the old woman's heart began to heave, and her great, heavy eyes kindled with living fire.