The third son a short time afterwards, returning home from market slightly hazy in his ideas, was run over by an express train as he endeavoured to cross the line.
Next morning the body was found, horribly mutilated, and a porter was despatched to break the tidings to the bereaved mother. The man, overcome with the horror of the event, and full of compassion for the white-haired woman—who stood stolidly awaiting his message, evidently unsuspicious of its tenor—could scarcely find words with which to tell the news.
"There's bin an accident," he faltered, "we'n foun' a mon o' th' rails—dead—cut t' pieces by a train."
Old Lizzie stared at him in silence; then a light seemed to break in on her.
"Ah," she said. "Happen it's our Bill!"
And with that she turned on her heel and went upstairs to select a winding-sheet for him.
Some of our folks like to talk about their troubles. Over and over again they tell you, almost in the same words, exactly how it all came about. A poor woman pleats her apron and gazes at you with pathetic eyes, which she stops to wipe occasionally. The story has grown familiar to both relater and listener, and sometimes you are regaled not only with the tale itself, but with the repetition of your own comments thereon.
"I mind ye said so and so," she says, "an' it's often seemed to comfort me."
Clearly there is nothing for it but immediately to say it again, and you are rewarded by seeing the face brighten perceptibly, much as a child's brightens as it hears a well—known point in a familiar tale. These simple people are very like children.
But sometimes the pain is too great to be dilated on, and then a chance phrase or word, infinitely pathetic, betrays the depth of sorrow; sometimes there is silence more pathetic still.