“I don’t know where it is,” replied the boy. “I saw it coming, way off, just now, like a bright cloud, and now it’s all around me. Why, mother, don’t you see it? The room is all full of it!”
Mr. Hapley now entered the room, but, seemingly unable to endure the scene, silently bowed his head against the wall. Jessie and Henry also came in with their father.
“I want to kiss you all,” whispered Benny to his mother, after the family had assembled.
His wish was complied with, and his mother, father, Jessie, Henry and Marcus successively received and returned a parting kiss.
“Now one more for Sammy—you’ll give it to him when he comes back, wont you, mother?” added Benny.
The promise was made, and the kiss given. But the poor boy did not know that his absent brother was at that moment serving a sentence in jail as a convicted felon. The result of Sam’s trial had been wisely concealed from Benny, on account of his illness.
The circle had sat in silence for several minutes, when Mrs. Hapley arose, and tenderly laying her precious charge upon the bed, kissed the pale brow, and said, in a low, calm tone, which almost startled herself:—
“It is all over—the bitterness of death is past!”
The spirit of the child had departed so peacefully, that she could not tell when he drew the last breath. But the true and loving heart had ceased to beat, and the mild eyes were set in death, and the last enemy had accomplished his work surely, though noiselessly.
Marcus soon withdrew from the sorrowing circle, his own heart bowed in grief as sincere if not as deep as that of the near relatives of the deceased. It was the first time he had ever come into the immediate presence of death, and had seen, as it were, the fatal arrow wing its way into the living mark. It was, indeed, the first time that the grave had claimed one in whom he felt so deep an interest, and towards whom he held so near a relation; for he never could realize the death of his father, followed as it was by years of anxious suspense and hope deferred, and shrouded in impenetrable mystery up to this hour.