word.

Watson touched his arm.

'Don't you destroy it,' he said in warning; 'it'll be asked for at the
inquest.'

The men descended. Watson and the doctor departed.

John and Isaac were left alone in the kitchen. Isaac hung over the fire,
which had been piled up in the hope of restoring warmth to the drowned
woman. Suddenly he took out the letter and, bending his head to the
blaze, began to read it.

'Isaac, yer a cruel husband to me, an there's no way fer me but the way
I'm goin. I didn't mean no 'arm, not at first, but there, wot's the good
o' talkin. I can't bear the way as you speaks to me an looks at me, an
I'll never go to prison--no, never. It's orful--fer the children ull
'ave no mother, an I don't know however Arthur ull manage. But yer
woodent show me no mercy, an I can't think of anythin different. I did
love yer an the childer, but the drink got holt o' me. Yer mus see as
Arthur is rapped up, an Edie's eyes ull 'ave to be seen to now an agen.
I'm sorry, but there's nothin else. I wud like yer to kiss me onst, when
they bring me in, and jes say, Bessie, I forgive yer. It won't do yer no
'arm, an p'raps I may 'ear it without your knowin. So good-bye, Isaac,
from yur lovin wife, Bessie....'

As he read it, the man's fixed pallor and iron calm gave way. He leant
against the mantelpiece, shaken at last with the sobs of a human and a
helpless remorse.

John, from his seat on the settle a few yards away, looked at Isaac
miserably. His lips opened now and then as though to speak, then closed
again. His brain could form no distinct image. He was encompassed by a
general sense of desolation, springing from the loss of his money, which
was pierced every now and then by a strange sense of guilt. It seemed to
have something to do with Bessie, this last, though what he could not
have told.

So they sat, till Mary Anne's voice called 'Isaac' from the top of the
stairs.

Isaac stood up, drew one deep breath, controlled himself, and went, John
following.

Mary Anne held the bedroom door open for them, and the two men entered,
treading softly.

The women stood on either hand crying. They had clothed the dead in
white and crossed her hands upon her breast. A linen covering had been
pressed, nun-like, round the head and chin. The wound was hidden, and
the face lay framed in an oval of pure white, which gave it a strange
severity.

Isaac bent over her. Was this _Bessie_--Bessie, the human, faulty,
chattering cr