Isabel stood motionless. Her arms fell downward, her parted lips grew white, and closed slowly together. The life seemed freezing in her young veins.
"Come, and you shall see, Isabel, it is like sleep, only more beautiful," and Mary drew the heart-stricken child into the chamber of death.
Chilled with grief and shivering with awe, Isabel gazed upon her father, the tears upon her cheek seemed freezing; a feeble shudder passed over her limbs, and after the first long gaze she turned her eyes upon Mary with a look of helpless misery. Mary wound her arms around the child, her tears fell like rain, while the expression that lay upon her lip was full of holy sweetness.
"Isabel, dear, let us kneel down and say our prayers, he will know it."
"I can't, I am frozen." Isabel shook her head.
"Don't—don't, heaven is but a little way off," answered Mary: "you and I have both got a father there now!"
The two little girls knelt down together, and truly it seemed as if that marble face smiled upon them.
The door was closed between them and the outer room where the boy sat. He heard the low tone of their voices; he heard sobs and a passionate outbreak of sorrow; these ebbed mournfully away, and then arose a low silvery voice, deep, clear, angel-like, and with it came words—simple in their pathos—such as springs from the heart of a child when it overflows with love and tears. The boy bent his head reverently; his meek blue eyes filled with unshed drops; he sunk to his knees and wept, softly, as he listened.
Thus the children were found a little time after, when an undertaker came by orders of the Chief of Police to prepare the dead for honorable burial. Following his example, a few noble fellows about his office had contributed out of their pay, and thus poor Chester was saved from a pauper's grave.
A little before night they carried Chester out through the hall that his light foot had trod so often. Behind him went the two little girls, hand in hand, looking very sorrowful but weeping no longer. Upon Mary's head was an old but well kept mourning bonnet—a little too large—which Joseph had brought down from the scant wardrobe of his aunt, and around Isabel's little straw cottage lay a band of black crape, which had served her as a neck-tie. The boy watched them from the window while these mournful objects could be seen, and then crept to his own home.