“Hah!” he sighed; “I must go back and tell her I was wrong. Poor mother, what she must feel!”
He moved slowly toward the door of the room, and then encountered the housekeeper standing at the foot of the stairs.
“Oh, my dear, my dear!” she moaned; “what shall we do? I heard them send for hammers to break in again.”
“They will not, Berry,” he said quietly. “I will go up and let them in.”
“Oh, my dear!” cried the woman, forgetting the noise at the front door. “Don’t speak like that. What is the matter? You’re white as ashes.”
“Matter?” he said, looking at the old woman wistfully. “Matter—ashes—yes, ashes. I can’t tell you, Berry. I’m ill. I feel as if—as if—”
He did not finish the sentence aloud, but to himself, and he said:
“As if my father I loved so were dead.” He walked quietly upstairs now into the hall, where there was the buzzing of voices coming in from the street, where people were collecting, and he distinctly heard some one say:
“Here they come.”
It did not seem to him to matter who was coming; and he walked quietly to the door, shot back the bolts, and threw it open, for half a dozen men to make a dash forward to enter; but the boy stood firmly in the opening, with his face flushing once more, and looking more like his old self. “Well,” he cried haughtily. “What is it?”