Regaining her composure in some measure, the latter, covering her face with her hands, and bursting into tears, sobbed out,—
"He's drowned!"
"Oh! which of them?" shrieked my mother, wringing her hands, and every vestige of color in her cheeks supplanted by a pallor so frightful that it struck dismay to my heart.
A mysterious instinct had warned her, the moment the woman spoke the first words, that some calamity had overtaken us.
"Which of them?" she repeated, with frantic impetuosity, "Is it my husband or my son? Speak! speak! My heart breaks!"
"Your husband, Mrs. Lacey," the woman replied; and as if relieved from the crushing burden she had thus transferred from her own spirit to ours, she sank back exhausted into a chair.
"Oh! when, where, and how?" demanded my mother. "Are you sure it is true? Who brought the news?"
"Your own son, Ma'am; he sent me here to tell you," answered the woman.
The door opened at the moment, and Fred, accompanied by several of the neighbors, entered the room. Crying as if his heart would break, he called out,—
"Oh, mother! it's too true,—father is gone!"