Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/309

Rh changing to infinite tenderness, "Hush, darling, hush, my love!"

"You did!" the boy began to shout. "When she came home last time, long ago, you wouldn't let her in. It was in the middle of the night, and she stood on the doorstep, and you wouldn't let her in."

I ran to put the boy from the room. He turned to me. As I came near him and took his hand, he began to sob.

"He did! he did! he wouldn't let her in; and she cried and cried."

"You never heard it," Walter Barrington shouted, half raising himself. "Hush! hold your tongue!"

"I did!" the boy screamed back. "I was at the little window upstairs; and she cried and cried, and I called, 'Mother! Mother! Mother!' but she did not hear me."

"It was a dream," I said pityingly, leading the boy to the door, "only a dream."

"No," he sobbed, "it wasn't, for I heard her singing in the darkness as she went away, and I knew the song, and I went to bed and cried and cried, and then I fell asleep and forgot; but I know it was she, for she sang, 'Sleep,