But Mr. Hewland answered in one word,—­“Gone.”

That word answered so many questions on which life and love hung, that fearful night!

Mr. Hewland was wet and cold.  He went up to his room and changed his clothing.  When the daylight, pale and scared, was creeping in, he came down again.

“Would you not like to go down and see?” he said to Bel.

“Can I?”

“Yes.  There is no danger.  The streets are comparatively clear.  I will go with you.”

Bel asked Miss Smalley.

“Will you come?  Auntie will be sure to sleep, I think.”

Miss Smalley had scarcely heart either to go or stay.  Of the two, it was easier to go.  To do—­to see—­something.

Mr. Sparrow came in.  He met them at the door, and turned directly back with them.

He, too, was a free-seat worshipper at Old Trinity.  He and the music-mistress—­they were both of English birth, hence of the same national faith—­had been used to go from the same dwelling, separately, to the same house of worship, and sit in opposite galleries.  But their hearts had gone up together in the holy old words that their lips breathed in the murmur of the congregation.  These links between them, of country and religion, which they had never spoken of, were the real links.

As they went forth this Sunday morning, in company for the first time, toward the church in which they should never kneel again, they felt another,—­the link that Eve and Adam felt when the sword of flame swept Paradise.

Plain old souls!—­Plain old bodies, I mean, hopping and “todillating”—­as Bel expressed the little spinster’s gait—­along together; their souls walked in a sweet and gracious reality before the sight of God.

Bel and Mr. Hewland were beside each other.  They had never walked together before, of course; but they hardly thought of the unusualness.  The time broke down distinctions; nothing looked strange, when everything was so.

They went along by the Common fence.  In the street, a continuous line of wagons passed them, moving southward.  Gentlemen sat on cart-fronts beside the teamsters, accompanying their fragments of property to places of bestowal.  Inside the inclosure, in the malls, along under the trees, upon the grass, away back to the pond, were heaps of merchandise.  Boxes, bales, hastily collected and unpacked goods of all kinds, from carpets to cotton-spools, were thrown in piles, which men and boys were guarding, the police passing to and fro among them all.  People were wrapped against the keen November cold, in whatsoever they could lay their hands on.  A group of men pacing back and forth before a pyramid of cases, had thrown great soft white blankets about their shoulders, whose bright striped borders hung fantastically about them, and whose corners fell and dragged upon the muddy ground.

Down by Park Street corner, and at Winter Street, black columns of coal smoke went up from the steamers; the hose, like monstrous serpents, twisted and trailed along the pavements; water stood in pools and flowed in runnels, everywhere.