face down to her own, wrinkled and wan as it was, scarce so old in
expression as her mistress's, and with one long kiss and sob speak the
foreboding and anxious farewell she could not utter.

"Only you now!" whispered Hitty to her child, as Keery's peaceful,
shrouded face was hidden under the coffin-lid and carried away to
Greenfield Hill. Pitiful whisper! happily all-unmeaning to the child,
but full of desolation to the mother, floating with but one tiny plank
amid the wild wrecks of a midnight ocean, and clinging as only the
desperate can cling to this vague chance of life.

A rough, half-crazed girl, brought from the alms-house, now did the
drudgery of the family. Abner Dimock had grown penurious, and not one
cent of money was given for comfort in that house, scarce for need. The
girl was stupid and rude, but she worked for her board,--recommendation
enough in Mr. Dimock's eyes; and so hard work was added to the other
burdens loaded upon his silent wife. And soon came another,
all-mysterious, but from its very mystery a deeper fear. Abner Dimock
began to stay at home, to be visited at late hours by one or two men
whose faces were full of evil and daring; and when, in the dead of the
long nights, Hitty woke from her broken and feverish sleep, it was to
hear muffled sounds from the cellar below, never heard there before; and
once, wrapping a shawl about her, she stole down the stairways with bare
feet, and saw streams of red light through the chinks of the
cellar-door, and heard the ring of metal, and muttered oaths, all
carefully dulled by such devices as kept the sounds from chance passers
in the street, though vain as far as the inhabitants of the house itself
were concerned. Trembling and cold, she stole back to her bed, full of
doubts and fears, neither of which she dared whisper to any one, or
would have dared, had she possessed a single friend to whom she could