"Does mamma look sick to you?"
"She looks as if she cried a great deal."
"But does she look as if she was going to die?"
"To die!" he repeated.
"Yes, to die," said Julia.
What heart lay developed under the lad's vest died within him. This, then, was the penalty that lay before him; his crime was to kill his mother!
"Who says she's going to die?" he asked, roughly.
"No one says so, but I know she is. Read that."
Bob took the little note the child handed him, and read it in silence: