"What's the matter, mother? What's the matter, girls?" he asked anxiously.
Mrs. Klegg could only look at him in speechless misery.
"We've got a telegraph dispatch," finally answered Maria, bursting in a torrent of tears, into which Sophia joined sympathetically, "and we know it's about poor Si."
"Yes, it must be about poor Si; nobody else but him," added Sophia with a wail.
The father's face grew more sorrowful than be fore. "What does it say?" he nerved himself to ask, after a moment's pause.
"We don't know," sobbed Maria. "We haint opened it. We're afraid to. Here it is."
The father took it with trembling hand. "Well," he said after a little hesitation, "it can't tell nothin' no worse than we've already heard. Let's open it. Bring me my specs."
Maria ran for the spectacles, while her father, making a strong effort to calm himself, slit open the envelope with a jack-knife, adjusted his glasses, and read the inclosure over very slowly.
"Josiah Nott killed Hospital at Chattanooga badly wounded E. C. Bower's ox. What on airth does that mean? I can't for the life o' me make it out."
"Read it over again, pap," said Maria, suddenly drying her eyes.