"Do not weep, dear," she said feebly. "Perhaps it is best so. A lonely
woman's life is scarce worth living. We have no hopes, no aspirations;
other women have had happy husbands and children, but we in this
forgotten place have grown old together. I go first, but you must soon
follow."
Tabitha, comfortably conscious of only forty years and an iron frame,
shrugged her shoulders and smiled grimly.
"I go first," repeated Ursula in a new and strange voice as her heavy
eyes slowly closed, "but I will come for each of you in turn, when your
lease of life runs out. At that moment I will be with you to lead your
steps whither I now go."
As she spoke the flickering lamp went out suddenly as though
extinguished by a rapid hand, and the room was left in utter darkness.
A strange suffocating noise issued from the bed, and when the trembling
women had relighted the lamp, all that was left of Ursula Mallow was
ready for the grave.
That night the survivors passed together. The dead woman had been a
firm believer in the existence of that shadowy borderland which is said
to form an unhallowed link between the living and the dead, and even the
stolid Tabitha, slightly unnerved by the events of the night, was not
free from certain apprehensions that she might have been right.
With the bright morning their fears disappeared. The sun stole in at
the window, and seeing the poor earth-worn face on the pillow so touched
it and glorified it that only its goodness and weakness were seen, and
the beholders came to wonder how they could ever have felt any dread of
aught so calm and peaceful.
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