All her thoughts were suddenly set on the ring, her one poor shred of fortune.
She wanted to feel it on her finger, and press its cool gold with the queer markings on her eyelids.
But Tom had gone away and she couldn't reach the trunk in the corner.
Tears trickled down her cheeks and through the mist of them she saw that the boy Abe stood at the foot of the bed.
"Feelin' comfortabler ?" he asked.

He had a harsh untunable voice, his father's, but harsher, and he spoke the drawling dialect of the backwoods.
His figure stood in the light, so that the dying mother saw only its outline.

He was a boy about nine years old, but growing too fast, so that he had lost the grace of childhood and was already lanky and ungainly.

As he turned his face crosswise to the light he revealed a curiously rugged profile--a big nose springing sharply from the brow, a thick underhung lower lip, and the beginning of a promising Adam's apple.

His stiff black hair fell round his great ears, which stood out like the handles of a pitcher.