There
is murder, but by whom? for what? Quien sabe?
And that is how it happened on Carnival night, in the last mad
moments of Rex's reign, a broken-hearted mother sat gazing
wide-eyed and mute at a horrible something that lay across the
bed. Outside the long sweet march music of many bands floated in
as if in mockery, and the flash of rockets and Bengal lights
illumined the dead, white face of the girl troubadour.
LITTLE MISS SOPHIE
When Miss Sophie knew consciousness again, the long, faint,
swelling notes of the organ were dying away in distant echoes
through the great arches of the silent church, and she was alone,
crouching in a little, forsaken black heap at the altar of the
Virgin. The twinkling tapers shone pityingly upon her, the
beneficent smile of the white-robed Madonna seemed to whisper
comfort. A long gust of chill air swept up the aisles, and Miss
Sophie shivered not from cold, but from nervousness.
But darkness was falling, and soon the lights would be lowered,
and the great massive doors would be closed; so, gathering her
thin little cape about her frail shoulders, Miss Sophie hurried
out, and along the brilliant noisy streets home.
It was a wretched, lonely little room, where the cracks let the
boisterous wind whistle through, and the smoky, grimy walls
looked cheerless and unhomelike. A miserable little room in a
miserable little cottage in one of the squalid streets of the
Third District that nature and the city fathers seemed to have
forgotten.
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