Bare and comfortless as their home was, no one knows what tempted them to leave it that terrible day. They were bound for a neighbor’s house half a mile distant but had not gone quarter the way when they turned in the wrong direction. They struggled on, husband and wife, carrying the babe less than a year old, until the woman could go no further, and throwing up her hands, fell down. Laying the now stiffening form of the child beside its mother, the bewildered father wandered on, on, until he reached by chance, miles distant, a place to incoherently tell his story and--perish.
The family belonged to the poor “dumb driven cattle” class of Russian Jews. Their own kind had left them to their fate. So the settlers had turned out to give them Christian burial. When the desolate funeral was over the party drove rapidly home again, with the picture before them, of what might be their own fate, if night overtook them on the prairies.
(French of Andre Theuriet: Isabel Smithson: For Short Stories.)
“Can you receive Madame Blouet, sir?” asked an attendant, as he opened the door of the deputy governor’s office.
It was a large, severe-looking apartment, with a very high ceiling, two windows draped with green damask curtains, walls and arm-chairs of the same color, and heavy bookcases of mahogany. The highly waxed floor reflected the cold symmetry of the official furniture, and the mirror over the mantel-piece reproduced with exactness a black marble clock, two bronze lamps and a pair of gilt candlesticks.
Hubert Boinville, the deputy governor, was seated, with his back to the fire-place, at a large mahogany desk which was littered over with deeds and various papers. He raised his grave, melancholy face which was framed in a brown beard, tinged with a few gray hairs, and his black eyes, with tired-looking lids, glanced at the card which the solemn usher handed to him.
On this card was written in a trembling hand, _Veuve Blouet_ (widow Blouet), but the name conveyed no information to him and he put it down impatiently.
“It is an old lady, sir,” said the attendant, in explanation, “shall I send her away?”
“No, let her come in,” replied the deputy governor in a tone of resignation.
The usher straightened himself up in his uniform, bowed, and disappeared, returning the next minute to show in the visitor, who stopped on the threshold and dropped an old-fashioned courtesy.