CHAPTER ELEVENTH.
What is this secret sin, this untold tale, That art cannot extract, nor penance cleanse?
-- Her muscles hold their place; Nor discomposed, nor formed to steadiness, No sudden flushing, and no faltering lip .-- Mysterious Mother.
The coffin had been borne from the place where it rested.

The mourners, in regular gradation, according to their rank or their relationship to the deceased, had filed from the cottage, while the younger male children were led along to totter after the bier of their brother, and to view with wonder a ceremonial which they could hardly comprehend.
The female gossips next rose to depart, and, with consideration for the situation of the parents, carried along with them the girls of the family, to give the unhappy pair time and opportunity to open their hearts to each other and soften their grief by communicating it.

But their kind intention was without effect.

The last of them had darkened the entrance of the cottage, as she went out, and drawn the door softly behind her, when the father, first ascertaining by a hasty glance that no stranger remained, started up, clasped his hands wildly above his head, uttered a cry of the despair which he had hitherto repressed, and, in all the impotent impatience of grief, half rushed half staggered forward to the bed on which the coffin had been deposited, threw himself down upon it, and smothering, as it were, his head among the bed-clothes, gave vent to the full passion of his sorrow.

It was in vain that the wretched mother, terrified by the vehemence of her husband's affliction--affliction still more fearful as agitating a man of hardened manners and a robust frame--suppressed her own sobs and tears, and, pulling him by the skirts of his coat, implored him to rise and remember, that, though one was removed, he had still a wife and children to comfort and support.