The state of affairs at home can be easily imagined—a hysterical mother, a father frenzied with grief, one little bed empty, its occupant gone forever, and the house of mourning, desolation and despair.
But crushed with grief as he was, and overwhelmingly shocked, Swanny Marsh did not say anything.
He kept the horrid secret locked up in his breast.
CHAPTER IV.
A NIGHT IN A COFFIN.
Tommy watched the undertaker's house from a distance, saw the body of the dead child taken in, waited till the crowd dispersed, and then crept into the house by the back way.
The room in which the coffins were stored was up one flight of stairs.
No one saw him go up.
He pushed the door open, and the pale moonlight streamed in on piles of coffins, some made of common pine and others of handsomely polished wood.
These latter were the elegant caskets of the rich.