F. Colburn (Francis Colburn) Adams
Chapter 77
away to the rookery, in a red coffin, and got a clean sheet of the
Blazers, and hung it up beside the coffin, and set four candles on a
table, and a little cross between them, and then borrowed a Bible
with a cross on it, and laid it upon the coffin. Then they sent for
me. I cried and kissed poor English, for poor English was the only
father I knew, and he was good to me. I never shall forget what I
saw in that little room that night. I found a dozen friends and the
McCartys there, forming a half-circle of curious and demoniacal
faces, peering over the body of English, whose face, I thought,
formed the only repose in the picture. There were two small
pictures-one of the Saviour, and the other of Kossuth-hung at the
head and feet of the corpse; and the light shed a lurid paleness
over the living and the dead. And detective Fitzgerald and another
gentleman looked in.
"'Who's here to-night?' says Fitzgerald, in a friendly sort of way.
"'God love ye, Mr. Fitzgerald, poor English is gone! Indeed, then,
it was the will of the Lord, and He's taken him from us-poor
English!' says Mrs. McCarty. And Fitzgerald, and the gentleman with
him, entered the den, and they shuddered and sat down at the sight
of the face in the coffin. 'Sit down, Mr. Fitzgerald, do!--and may
the Lord love ye! There was a deal of good in poor English. He's
gone-so he is!' said Mrs. McCarty, begging them to sit down, and
excuse the disordered state of her few rags. She had a hard struggle
to live, God knows. They took off their hats, and sat a few minutes
in solemn silence. The rags moved at the gentleman's side, which
made him move towards the door. 'What is there, my good woman?' he
inquired. 'She's a blessed child, Mr. Fitzgerald knows that same:'
says Mrs. McCarty, turning down the rags and revealing the wasted
features of her youngest girl, a child eleven years old, sinking in
death. 'God knows she'll be better in heaven, and herself won't be
long out of it,' Mrs. McCarty twice repeated, maintaining a singular
indifference to the hand of death, already upon the child. The