CHAPTER XIII.
A pickaxe, and a spade, a spade, For,--and a shrouding sheet: O, a pit of clay for to be made For such a guest is meet.
-- Song in Hamlet.
"Stand back! stand off, the whole of ye!" said Esther hoarsely to the crowd, which pressed too closely on the corpse; "I am his mother, and my right is better than that of ye all! Who has done this?
Tell me, Ishmael, Abiram, Abner! open your mouths and your hearts, and let God's truth and no other issue from them.

Who has done this bloody deed ?" Her husband made no reply, but stood, leaning on his rifle, looking sadly, but with an unaltered eye, at the mangled remains of his son.

Not so the mother, she threw herself on the earth, and receiving the cold and ghastly head into her lap, she sat contemplating those muscular features, on which the death-agony was still horridly impressed, in a silence far more expressive than any language of lamentation could have proved.
The voice of the woman was frozen in grief.

In vain Ishmael attempted a few words of rude consolation; she neither listened nor answered.

Her sons gathered about her in a circle, and expressed, after their uncouth manner, their sympathy in her sorrow, as well as their sense of their own loss, but she motioned them away, impatiently with her hand.