And now it was her task to make the
blind man cry. She recognized something familiar in the hard,
stony expression of his face, something which brought back the
Asylum, with all its dreaded horrors. She had seen strong men
there look just as he was looking. Dr. Griswold had called them
crazy, and knowing well what that word implied she would save
Richard from so sad a fate.
"It will be lonesome for you when Miggie's gone," she said, as a
prelude, to the attempt; "lonesomer than it has ever been before;
and the nights will be so dark, for when the morning comes
there'll be no Miggie here. She will look sweetly in her coffin,
but you can't see her, can you? You can FEEL how beautiful she is,
perhaps; and I shall braid her hair just as she used to wear it."
There was a perceptible tremor in Richard's frame, and perceiving
it, Nina continued quickly,
"We shall never forget her, shall we? and we'll often fancy we
hear her singing through the halls, even though we know she's far
away heading the choir in Heaven. That will be a pleasanter sound,
won't it, than the echo of the bell when the villagers count the
eighteen strokes and a half, and know it tolls for Miggie? The
hearse wheels, too--how often we shall hear them grinding through
the gravel, as they will grind, making a little track when they
come up, and a deeper one when they go away, for they'll carry
Miggie then.
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