articulate choked by the convulsive rising in her throat. They
clustered round her with eager faces, catching a glimpse of some
terrible truth to be revealed.

"My dear young ladies! my dear girls!" she gasped out at length, and
then she burst into tears.

"Oh! do tell us what it is, nurse!" said one. "Anything is better
than this. Speak!"

"My children! I don't know how to break it to you. My dears, poor
Mr. Harry is brought home"--

"Brought home--BROUGHT home--how?" Instinctively they sank their
voices to a whisper; but a fearful whisper it was. In the same low
tone, as if afraid lest the walls, the furniture, the inanimate
things which told of preparation for life and comfort, should hear,
she answered--

"Dead!"

Amy clutched her nurse's arm, and fixed her eyes on her as if to
know if such a tale could be true; and when she read its
confirmation in those sad, mournful, unflinching eyes, she sank,
without word or sound, down in a faint upon the floor. One sister
sat down on an ottoman, and covered her face, to try and realise it.
That was Sophy. Helen threw herself on the sofa, and burying her
head in the pillows, tried to stifle the screams and moans which
shook her frame.