The transmutation of the emotions or the passions into one another is among the mysteries of the sphere of morals. In some natures, even the most sacred grief, the outcome of a child’s death, I have seen capable of change into anger at a world in which such things are possible.

Susan had loved her sturdy little boy with unreasoning ardor, and indulged him to the utmost limit their scant means allowed. He had been like her in face, and this pleased her. He had, too, her masculine vigor, and seemed more bone of her bone than the two idiots who had gone early to the grave.

She sat just within the doorway, rocking. The chair creaked at each strong impulse of her foot. An oblong of sunshine lay at her feet, and in it a faded crape bonnet, last relic of a day when prosperity could afford to grief a uniform. It had turned up in her vain search after a decent garment for the dead. As she continued to rock with violence, the loose planks of the floor moving, a toy ark, the gift of Dorothy to the boy, fell from a shelf. Noah and his maimed beasts tumbled out, and lay on their sides in the sun. She took no note of the scattered menagerie.

161The room was in no worse than its usual disarray, with no sign of that terrible precision which we associate with the death-chamber. At last she rose quickly, and, pushing the toys and bonnet aside with an impatient foot, left the rocking-chair in motion, and trod heavily up and down the room, opening and shutting her hands as she walked. She fed her rage with each look she cast on her dead boy.

A far gentler woman once said to me that there was for her in her child’s death the brutality of insult. Some such feeling was now at work with Susan Colkett.

In her younger life she had lived on a farm in upper Canada, a tall, pretty, slim girl, quick of tongue, unruly, and with an undeveloped and sensual liking for luxury and ease. Then she married a man well enough off to have given her a comfortable life. A certain incapacity to see consequences, with that form of fearlessness which is without fear until the results of action or inaction are too evident, led her to be careless of debts. Then her husband drank, and grew weary of her tornadoes of unreasoning anger; the idiot children came, and she began to think of what even yet she might realize for herself if he were dead. Making no effort to stop him, she let him go his way, seeing without one restraining word the growth of a deadly habit. Dorothy had said that she helped his downward course even more actively. His death left her penniless, but free. Men were unwilling, however, to face her wild temper, and when, at last, her looks were fast fading, to help the only things in the world she cared for, she took the 162stout little man who had for her from his youth an unchanging affection. Misfortune taught her no good lessons. Even now she hated work, loved ease, and lacked imagination to picture consequences. Amidst the animal distress her child’s death occasioned, she was still capable of entertaining the thought of crime; in fact, her loss contributed a new impulse in the storm of fury it evoked. They were close to the end of their resources. There is in Paris a Place St. Opportune. Who this saint was, I know not. His biography might be of interest. There is probably a fallen angel of the same name who makes the paths of virtue slippery. Crime had been near to this woman for years, and ever nearer since disaster had been a steady companion. She had lacked opportunity, and that alone. Nor was this the only time she had cast temptation in the way of her simple-minded husband.

At last, as, striding to and fro, she went by the doorway, she saw Dorothy, and with her a thin man in shining, much-worn, black alpaca clothing.

She knew at once that he was the preacher who had been brought up from Mackenzie to bury her child.

Upon this she turned back into the room, and stood a moment by the two chairs on which lay the pine box which Joe had made. The little fellow within it had been hardly changed by his brief illness. He was fair to see; white, and strongly modeled; and now he was beautiful with the double refinements of youth and death. She touched his cheek as if to test the reality of death, and then 163kissed him, and, laying over him the rude cover, turned away.

At the door she met Dorothy and the minister. Dorothy said, “Good morning, Susan.”

“You’ve been a heap of time comin’.”

Dorothy, glancing at Mrs. Colkett, did not enter, but stepped to one side and, leaning against the log wall, waited. The little man in the worn alpaca suit was stopped as he turned to go in by the gaunt form of his hostess.

“There ain’t no need to go in or to preach,” she said.

Upon this Dorothy plucked at his coat-skirt, and, much embarrassed, he fell back, saying, “That’s as friends please.”

Then Joe came from the cow-shed and went in past his wife. As he went by, he nodded cheerfully to Dorothy and to the preacher. “’Most ready; won’t be long.”

Mrs. Colkett stood looking across the clearing. The preacher, uneasily moving to and fro, at last approached her again. “My sister,” he said, “the hand of the Lord has been heavy on this household of his people.” From her great height Susan Colkett cast her eyes down on the wan little person below her. “It is fit,” he went on, “that while—”

“Look here,” said Susan; “you’ve come to bury that child, and that’s all you’re here for. Just set down and wait”; and so saying, she brought out two crippled chairs.

Dorothy said, “No, I will stand.”

The preacher sat down without a word, and found 164occupation in keeping his place, as the chair-legs bored unequally into the soft soil. At last, greatly troubled, he looked toward Dorothy for consolation, and, receiving none, at last fell on his knees in deep despair. “Oh, Lord!” he cried, “move the heart of this woman that she may receive the message of thy grace!” and on this Dory too knelt in the sunshine, while Susan turned and went into the house.

Then there arose within the rude noise of loud hammering, and, utterly confused, the unhappy preacher looked up, and saw that he was alone with Dorothy.

“What manner of people ar............