Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/204

 Then, again, it was the first time that the grim skeleton, death, had ever crossed her own horizon, and here he was revealed indeed as the very "king of terrors." There were no mitigating circumstances—no softening of the awful shadow. The words "here to-day, and gone to-morrow," "in the midst of life we are in death," to which she had listened so often, had suddenly taken on a new meaning, and become to her an awful reality.

The glad young spirit of the girl, so new to suffering, was rent alike with grief for her own loss and intense sympathy for the bereaved family, and her own powerlessness to help or comfort them, and she longed at least to assure them of her undiminished love and trust.

One evening she came up the little dooryard of her humble home, with a step so heavy, so slow and lagging, that her listening grandmother, who was waiting for her, did not recognize it, it was so unlike the usual firm, free, bounding step of her child. As Alice entered the room, the old woman looked up and started, shocked at the ghastly paleness of her darling's face.