WHAT THE MORNING BROUGHT.
The child woke about seven o'clock. She knew the time by the sun's rays upon the window curtains. In that strong, cheerful light, the phantom faces had shrunk back to great red bunches of flowers again. She thought of the absurd dream, or vision, as of something that had happened ages ago, and wondered that she had been foolish enough to be frightened by it.
There was no noise in her father's room. But that was not strange, for he rarely retired to bed before three o'clock in the morning (even when he did not sit up all night), and slept till eight. His sleep, though short, was sound; and it was Pet's custom to prepare breakfast in her father's room without waking him.
She washed her face, which looked rosy and bewitching in the little cracked mirror, and dressed her hair in two simple bands down the cheeks, and put on a white calico dress with small red spots, and a white apron bound with blue. This was the dress that her father loved the best. She looked in the glass, and examined her damaged reflection with a charming coquetry, and said, "Pet, child, you are looking well to-day. Now for breakfast."
Pet walked to the door, humming her last music lesson in a low voice.
She placed her hand upon the latch, and opened the door softly. As it swung on its hinges, and she began to obtain a glimpse of the room, she noticed the gas still burning, though the daylight filled the apartment. This was strange. A shudder passed through her frame, and her cheeks began to pale.
"Pooh! what nonsense!" she said. She pushed the door wide open.
Was it another mocking, maddening vision that she saw? She rubbed her eyes in wild affright, and then raised her hands aloft with a piercing shriek.
There, before her, lay the dead body of her father. In the centre of his ghastly forehead was a small wound, from which the blood had trickled over the temples, bedabbling his thin gray hairs, and forming a small red pool by his side. Near him, on the floor, was a club with an iron tip, which had done the dreadful deed. She recognized it at once as a part of the machine.
The monstrous vision of the night was true! Her father was dead! Mr. Wilkeson was his murderer! She was an orphan!