straight down her back to her waist. The kindly dimness of the weak
candle abstracted from her form and features the little blemishes
which sunlight might have revealed--the stubble scratches upon her
wrists, and the weariness of her eyes--her high enthusiasm having
a transfiguring effect upon the face which had been her undoing,
showing it as a thing of immaculate beauty, with a touch of dignity
which was almost regal. The little ones kneeling round, their sleepy
eyes blinking and red, awaited her preparations full of a suspended
wonder which their physical heaviness at that hour would not allow to
become active.
The most impressed of them said:
'Be you really going to christen him, Tess?'
The girl-mother replied in a grave affirmative.
'What's his name going to be?'
She had not thought of that, but a name suggested by a phrase in
the book of Genesis came into her head as she proceeded with the
baptismal service, and now she pronounced it:
'SORROW, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost.'
She sprinkled the water, and there was silence.
'Say 'Amen,' children.'
The tiny voices piped in obedient response, 'Amen!'
Tess went on:
'We receive this child'--and so forth--'and do sign him with the sign
of the Cross.'
Here she dipped her hand into the basin, and fervently drew an
immense cross upon the baby with her forefinger, continuing with
the customary sentences as to his manfully fighting against sin,
the world, and the devil, and being a faithful soldier and servant
unto his life's end. She duly went on with the Lord's Prayer, the
children lisping it after her in a thin gnat-like wail, till, at the
conclusion, raising their voices to clerk's pitch, they again piped
into silence, 'Amen!'
Then their sister, with much augmented confidence in the efficacy
of the sacrament, poured forth from the bottom of her heart the
thanksgiving that follows, uttering it boldly and triumphantly in the
stopt-diapason note which her voice acquired when her heart was in
her speech, and which will never be forgotten by those who knew her.
The ecstasy of faith almost apotheosized her; it set upon her face a
glowing irradiation, and brought a red spot into the middle of each
cheek; while the miniature candle-flame inverted in her eye-pupils
shone like a diamond. The children gazed up at her with more and
more reverence, and no longer had a will for questioning. She did
not look like Sissy to them now, but as a being large, towering, and
awful--a divine personage with whom they had nothing in common.
Poor Sorrow's campaign against sin, the world, and the devil was
doomed to be of limited brilliancy--luckily perhaps for himself,
considering his beginnings. In the blue of the morning that fragile
soldier and servant breathed his last, and when the other children
