e interest of death to those who live in peaceful
times that, now that there was a lamp, all there required to slake their
curiosity by lingering gaze and comment before they would turn away.
Even the prisoner, when he saw the lantern flashed near the face of the
dead, demanded to be allowed to look before they led him down the hill.
His poor wife, who had expected his violence to fall only on herself,
kept by him, hysterically regretting that she had not been the victim.

Yet, although all this had taken place, it was only a short time before
the energy of a few, acting upon the paralysed will of others, had
cleared the ground. The white-dressed women crossed the open to the
descending path, huddling together as they walked, their eyes perforce
upon the rough ground over which they must pick their steps. There was
many a rift now in the breaking clouds above them, but only a few turned
an upward passionate glance. Sophia moved away in their midst. Seeing
her thus surrounded, Alec did not feel that he need approach.

"I don't know who she is," he said, pointing her out to Robert. "I
happened, in a queer way, to come up here with her." He paused a moment.
Some sentiment such as that she was a queen among women was in his mind,
but it did not rise to his lips. "She would like your help better than
mine," he added. "If you will see that she and her little sister are
taken care of, I will stay here"--he gave a gesture toward the
corpse--"till a stretcher comes."

"I will do my best to take care of them all," Robert Trenholme answered
with a sigh.

Old McNider and his little boy walked behind the women. Robert, limping
as he went, lifted the sleepy child in his arms and joined himself to
the company. They went under the dripping trees, down, down the dark,
slippery path. The white robes hardly glimmered in the darkness. Some of
the women wept; some of them held religious conversation, using such
forms of expression as grow up among certain classes of pious, people
and jar terribly on unaccustomed ears. Those who talked at this time had
less depth of character than those who were silent, and there was
evinced in their conversation a certain pride of resistance to
criticism--that is, they wished to show that if what they had looked for
had not come that night, their expectation of it bad been reasonable,
and that their greatest hopes would shortly be realised to the
confounding of unbelievers. They did not know the manner o