But of all this Mrs. Warner recked nothing. It was not the spirit she was interested in, but the body it was casting off; the gasping lips, and not the vital breath that already almost eluded them.
Mrs. Holder sank rapidly. The women began to gather in; Mrs. Warner maintained her place as chiefest in the synagogue, and put aside, with judicial firmness, all hands but her own. Most of the women congregated in the kitchen, where they eyed the scanty furniture and whispered of Myron's hard-heartedness, for she did not weep. She was feeling bitterly her impending loneliness and isolation, for deep down in her heart there yet lived that marvellous tenderness for kith and kin that takes so much to kill. Of a verity, "blood is thicker than water." The woman dying so fast in that inner room was her grandmother, the woman who had borne for her father what she had borne for My. She clasped My in her arms and hid her face in his curls. Mrs. Holder's voice came fitfully through the half-closed door to the women outside. Mrs. Warner came to the door just as Mrs. Deans entered the kitchen, hurrying in from the outer air, and bringing a new excitement with her to intensify the suspense. Mrs. Warner beckoned and whispered:
"She's speaking of hearing music and singing, now; they mostly don't last long after that."
"They," not "we"! Oh, strange race of dying people, that are set apart from all men by death's approach, that we never identify with ourselves! Oh, weird world to which they go, which doubtless we shall never enter! Oh, dreary passage they must tread, upon whose threshold we shall never stand! Oh, awful pang of severance they must endure, which we will never have to bear—and yet
"Fear not then, Spirit, Death's disrobing hand;
'Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour;
The transient gulf—dream of a startling sleep!"
Mrs. Deans and Mrs. Warner entered the room. Mrs. Deans' experienced eye told her how nearly time was ended for the dying woman. She turned to the kitchen.
"You better come in, Myron," she said.
Myron, with her child in her arms, entered, fearful yet of her grandmother denying her; but the old woman's eyes held no knowledge of her presence now. They wandered from one to the other of the throng of women impartially, and then as they fastened upon the child and lightened, as eyes might do which behold long-lost ones once dear, she held out wavering arms to the child.
"Jed, my own little lad," she said.
Myron went swiftly forward and laid My by her grandmother's side. He nestled to her lovingly, and she muttered tender words to him, calling him "Jed" and caressing him with fluttering fingers. He clasped his warm arms about hers, in which the blood was already chilling, and smilingly fell asleep, and a little later sleep came to her also.