“Make her get up, sir. Do make her get up. I can’t get her to move from that!” sobbed Mrs. Pole.
“When did this happen?” inquired Stuart in a low tone.
“Not twenty minutes ago, I reckon, though I’m not sure. It was as quick as lightning. One moment he was talking bright and cheerful, and the next moment he was gone like a flash! Oh! make her get up, sir. She will kill herself.”
“Palma, dear, you must let me take you in,” he said, laying his hand gently on the bowed head of his wife.
But sobs were her only reply.
“Palma, we will have to take him in and lay him on his bed. Come with me first.”
But she only wept and sobbed.
With gentle force he took her arms from around the dead, lifted her, bore her into the parlor, laid her on the sofa and called Polly to attend her.
He returned to the porch, told Mrs. Pole to look after the babies and leave everything else to him, and called the grief-stricken ’Sias to help him to carry the dead into the house.
It was a very light weight for so tall and broad-shouldered a man, but, then, it was but little more than skin and bone, a human chrysalis.