He saw a group of children gathered round a small smouldering fire—a fire, it seemed, without heat. The little ones looked scared and awed; traces of tears were on their faces; but the first outburst of grief had ceased. Only one, the eldest, sobbed as though her heart would break when Henry's mother spoke kindly and compassionately to her, in subdued whispering. She was a fair and lovely girl, but thin and sorrow-worn.
Henry's mother had a basket in her hand, and from it she took food, and offered it to the children; and oh, how eagerly they clutched it!
"How hungry they must be!" thought the wondering child.
The unhappy children were thinly clad, and the room bore the look of abject poverty. The uncarpeted floor, the worn-out rusher of the chairs, the small and cracked looking-glass hung against the wall—if it had not been cracked, it would not have been there—everything spoke of destitution.
As Henry's mother spoke comforting words to the poor children, an inner door slowly opened, and a woman mysteriously beckoned to the visitor, who, rising to the summons, would have left her boy behind, but that he clung still closer to her—terrified, he knew not why.
After a moment's thought, the mother moved slowly on, gently leading her boy. They ascended to an upper room, and there, on a bed, lay the lifeless body of the drowned lady, clothed in its coffin dress. Oh, how sharped and pinched the features! How deep and hollow the eyes! How thin and sharp the lips! Henry's mother was weeping bitterly; and the boy, wondering what it all could mean, wept too.
They retired from the chamber silently; and when they re-entered the room below, a man was there with a soiled and rusty coat. He was dirty and unshaven, and his watery eyes glared restlessly on all around him. He was seated by the fire, with his hands on his knees; and his children—for he was the father of the children there—had dispersed themselves, hither and thither.
Henry looked at the unhappy man, and dimly recognised in him a gentleman whom he had sometimes met when he was walking with his mother; but surely it could not be the same!
Yes, the same gentleman, for his mother spoke to him by name; and Henry remembered the name; and it was the name of the lady, too, who now lay pale and dead in the room above. The man groaned deeply when Henry's mother spoke, and tears fell fast down his cheeks; but he answered not a word.
Oh, how glad the child was to escape from that wretched dwelling!