Unconsciousness was the kindest thing that Heaven could have sent, for it relieved her for the time of the terrible grief of knowing that she had lost the only being who held her to life.
Utterly helpless and alone, Leonie left the room, and running down-stairs, endeavored vainly to find help, then went back feeling that she could not leave the living and the dead together under circumstances so ghastly as those.
She hurried back to the room where she had left them.
It was a piteous scene that greeted her.
Upon the floor Liz sat with the body of the boy clasped to her breast, rocking him to and fro while she sung to him the lullaby with which she had soothed him to sleep in infancy.
"Hush!" she whispered, lifting her finger warningly as Leonie entered the room. "The baby is asleep. He has not been well, and you must not wake him."
Acting upon an impulse, Leonie sprung to her side and took the child from her.
"What are you thinking of?" she gasped.
But before she could lay the child upon the bed, she felt ten long fingers close over her throat from the back.
She endeavored to cry out, but they clung all the more closely, closing tighter and tighter until she was as helpless as the child upon the bed.