r the
child, saw a slip of paper pinned upon its breast, and upon this paper
Joan read, in the sprawling, uncertain hand she knew so well:

"Dunnot be hard on me, Joan, dunnot--Good-bye!"

When Derrick entered the door, he found Joan standing alone in the
centre of the room, holding the scrap of paper in her hand.

CHAPTER XXXI - The Last Blow

"He won't live," the doctor said to Derrick. "He's not the man to
get over such injuries, powerful as he looks. He has been a reckless,
drunken brute, and what with the shock and reaction nothing will save
him. The clumsy rascals who attacked him meant to do him harm enough,
but they have done him more than they intended, or at least the man's
antecedents will help them to a result they may not have aimed at. We
may as well tell the girl, I suppose--fine creature, that girl, by the
way. She won't have any sentimental regrets. It's a good riddance for
her, to judge from what I know of them."

"I will tell her," said Derrick.

She listened to him with no greater show of emotion than an increased
pallor. She remembered the wounded man only as a bad husband and a bad
father. Her life would have been less hard to bear if he had died
years ago, but now that death stood near him, a miserable sense of
desolateness fell upon her, inconsistent as such a feeling might seem.

The village was full of excitement during this week. Everybody was ready
with suggestions and conjectures, everybody wanted to account for the
assault. At first there seemed no accounting for it at all, but at
length some one recollected that Lowrie had been last seen with Spring
and Braddy. They had "getten up a row betwixt theirsens, and t'others
had punsed him."

The greatest mystery was the use of vitriol. It could only be decided
that it had not been an ordinary case of neighborly "punsing," and that
there must have been a "grudge" in the matter. Spring and Braddy
had disappeared, and all efforts to discover their whereabouts were
unavailing.

On the subject of Liz's flight Joan was silent, but it did not remain a
secret many hours. A collier's wife had seen her standing, crying, and
holding a little bundle on her arm at the corner of a lane, and having
been curious enough to watch, had also seen Landsell join her a few
minutes later.

"She wur whimperin' afore he coom," said the woman, "but she cried i'
good earnest when he spoke to her, an' talked to him an' hung back as
if she could na ma