“There she lay in the parlor, her face as calm as if she had never known the harshness of brutal guardians, the agony of poison, the terrible pangs of dissolution. Death had at last given her peace, the peace which passeth understanding.”

Lina started awake. A scream had roused her, a girl crying for her mother. She thought of her own daughter, who was ill, but the cry came again from outside the house and a horse and carriage clattered onto Barber’s Bridge.

An old man died and left two children, a boy and a girl. No one wanted them. Their father settled them on the town and the town sent them to the poor farm.