What a long night that seemed to Rosalie! How she longed for morning to dawn, and lay awake straining her ears for any sound which might tell her that her stepmother had returned.
At length, as the grey morning light was stealing into the room, the door-bell rang again, and Betsey Ann went to open the door for her mistress. Rosalie felt as if she did not dare to go downstairs to hear what had happened.
Presently the slipshod shoes came slowly upstairs, and Betsey Ann came into the attic.
'Tell me,' said the child, 'what is it?'
'He's dead,' said Betsey Ann solemnly; 'he was dead when she got there; he never knew nothing after the wheels went over him. Isn't it awful, though?'
Little Rosalie could not speak and could not cry; she sat quite still and motionless.
What of her father's soul? That was the thought uppermost in her mind. Oh, where was he now? Was his soul safe? Could she have any hope, even the faintest, that he was with her mother in the bright home above?
It was a terrible end to Augustus Joyce's ungodly and sinful life. Cut off in the midst of his sins, with no time for repentance, no time to take his heavy load of guilt to the Saviour, whose love he had scorned and rejected. Oh, how often had he been called and invited by the Good Shepherd's voice of love! but he would not hearken, and now it was too late.