He reached the cottage at last, and bursting into the room where his grandmother was sitting with her foot in a chair, exclaimed, as he put down the child, who, as she was still enveloped in the bag, stood with difficulty:
"Oh, grandma, what do you think? I did see a light in the Tramp House, and there is somebody there—a woman—dead—frozen to death, with nothing over her, for she had given her cloak and shawl to her little girl. I went there. I found her, and brought the baby home in the carpet-bag, and now I must go back to the woman. Oh, it was dreadful to see her white face, and it is so cold there and dark;" and as if the horror of what he had seen had just impressed itself upon him, the boy turned pale and faint, and, staggering to a chair, burst into tears.
Too much astonished to utter a word, Mrs. Crawford stared at him a moment in a bewildered kind of way, and then, when the child, seeing him cry, began also to cry for "Mah-nee," and struggle in the bag, she forgot her lame foot, on which she had not stepped for a week, and going to the little girl, released her, and taking her upon her lap, began to untie the soft woolen cloak, and to chafe the cold fingers, while she questioned her grandson.
Having recovered himself somewhat, Harold repeated his story, and asked, with a shudder:
"Must I go for her alone? I can't, I can't. I was not afraid with the baby there, but it is so awful, and I never saw any one dead before."
"Go back alone! Of course not!" his grandmother replied. "But you must go to the park at once and tell them; go as fast as you can. She may not be dead."
"Yes, she is," Harold answered, decidedly. "I touched her face, and nothing alive could feel like that."
He was buttoning his overcoat preparatory to a fresh start, but before he went he kissed the little girl, who was sitting on his grandmother's lap, and who, as she saw him leaving her, began to cry for him, and to utter curious sounds unintelligible to them both. But Harold brought her a piece of bread, which she began to devour ravenously, and then he stepped quietly out and was soon breaking through the drifts which lay between the cottage and the park.