Dear little creetur!
And as he ran back the flowers fell; he stopped to pick ’em up, and the car swep’ down on him. Alice see his danger, she jumped to save him, only to be struck down herself.
Wall, what tongue of men or angels shall describe the seen that follered and ensued.
Martin layin’ in a dead faint, like death to all appearance—and it is blood relation to it. Little Adrian layin’ white and cold on a couch in the reception-hall, where the men had reverently laid him, right under the picter of that Eastern mother.
The agony in her dark face seemed to be for him, too—the fair-haired child of the race who condemn their barbarity, and practise worse.
And Alice a-layin’ white and onconscious, but breathin’ still, in her own room. One round, white arm a-hangin’ broken by her side, and blood streamin’ from a cruel gash in her head.
Wall, the best doctors in the city wuz there in a few minutes. But all their genius and wisdom and learnin’ could not bring back the spark of life that had flown away from little Adrian’s body.
And then afterwards the clergyman come and whispered consolin’ words to Martin in his darkened chamber.
But not all the preachin’ since Adam can make death other than death.
Martin didn’t want the clergyman—he wanted to be alone. He wouldn’t see anybody, and he lay still and cold after his senses come back—so still and cold that the doctors feared for his sanity, and even for his life.