Jenny took her lantern and her cloak. "It is time," she said to
herself, "to see whether he is coming back, whether the sea is calmer,
and whether the light is burning on the signal-mast." She went out.
There was nothing to be seen--barely a streak of white on the horizon.
It was raining, the dark, cold rain of early morning. No cabin window
showed a gleam of light.
[Illustration: "JENNY TOOK HER LANTERN."]
All at once, while peering round her, her eyes perceived a tumble-down
old cabin which showed no sign of light or fire. The door was swinging
in the wind; the wormeaten walls seemed scarcely able to support the
crazy roof, on which the wind shook the yellow, filthy tufts of rotten
thatch.
"Stay," she cried, "I am forgetting the poor widow whom my husband
found the other day alone and ill. I must see how she is getting on."
She knocked at the door and listened. No one answered. Jenny shivered
in the cold sea-wind.
"She is ill. And her poor children! She has only two of them; but she
is very poor, and has no husband."
She knocked again, and called out, "Hey, neighbour!" But the cabin was
still silent.
"Heaven!" she said, "how sound she sleeps, that it requires so much to
wake her."
At that instant the door opened of itself. She entered. Her lantern
illumined the interior of the dark and silent cabin, and showed her
the water falling from the ceiling as through the openings of a sieve.
At the end of the room an awful form was lying: a woman stretched out
motionless, with bare feet and sightless eyes. Her cold white arm
hung down among the straw of the pallet. She was dead. Once a strong
and happy mother, she was now only the spectre which remains of poor
humanity, after a long struggle with the world.
Near the bed on which the mother lay, two little children--a boy and a
girl--slept together in their cradle, and were smiling in their dreams.
Their mother, when she felt that she was dying, had laid her cloak
across their feet and wrapt them in her dress, to keep them warm when
she herself was cold.
[Illustration: "TWO LITTLE CHILDREN SLEPT TOGETHER IN THEIR CRADLE."]
How sound they slept in their old, tottering cradle, with their calm
breath and quiet little faces! It seemed as if nothing could awake
these sleeping orphans. Outside, the rain beat down in floods, and the
sea gave forth a sound like an alarm bell. From the old creviced roof,
through which blew the gale, a drop of water fell on the dead face, and
ran down it like a tear.