"Poor lamb! — Ye're come in good time, Master Winthrop."
She turned and began to address herself to the long gone-out fire in the chimney.
"What are you going to do, Karen?" he said softly.
She looked back at him, with her hand in the ashes.
"Haven't you watched to-night?"
"I've watched a many nights," she said shaking her head and beginning again to rake for coals in the cold fireplace, — "this aint the first. That aint nothin'. I'll watch now, dear, 'till the day dawn and the shadows flee away'; — what else should Karen do? 'Taint much longer, and I'll be where there's no night again. O come, sweet day! —" said the old woman clasping her hands together as she crouched in the fireplace, and the tears beginning to trickle down, — "when the mother and the childr'n'll all be together, and Karen somewheres — and our home won't be broken up no more! —"
She raked away among the ashes with an eager trembling hand.
"Karen, —" said Winthrop softly, — "Leave that."
"What, dear?" — she said.
"Leave that."