can
hear it. The men with the horses hurried forward to the edge of the
canal, the bargemen hung over the side of their boat; visible excitement
rose among them about something there. Nettie, never afraid, was less
timid than ever this morning. Without thinking of the risk of trusting
herself with these rude fellows alone, she went straight forward into
the midst of them with a curiosity for which she could scarcely account;
not anxiety, only a certain wonder and impatience, possessed her to see
what they had here.

What had they there?--not a man--a dreadful drowned image, all soiled
and swollen--a squalid tragic form, immovable, never to move more. Nettie
did not need to look at the dread, uncovered, upturned face. The moment
she saw the vague shape of it rising against the side of the boat, a
heap of dead limbs, recognisable only as something human, the terrible
truth flashed upon Nettie. She had found not him, but It. She saw nothing
more for one awful moment--heaven and earth reeling and circling around
her, and a horror of darkness on her eyes. Then the cold light opened up
again--the group of living creatures against the colourless skies, the
dead creature staring and ghastly, with awful dead eyes gazing blank
into the shuddering day. The girl steadied herself as she could on the
brink of the sluggish current, and collected her thoughts. The conclusion
to her search, and answer to all her questions, lay, not to be doubted
or questioned, before her. She dared not yield to her own horror, or
grief, or dismay. Susan sleeping, unsuspicious, in full trust of his
return--the slumbering house into which this dreadful figure must be
carried--obliterated all personal impressions from Nettie's mind. She
explained to the amazed group who and what the dead man was--where he
must be brought to--instantly, silently, before the world was awake. She
watched them lay the heavy form upon a board, and took off her own shawl
to lay over it, to conceal it from the face of day. Then she went on
before them, with her tiny figure in its girlish dress, like a child in
the shadow of the rough but pitying group that followed. Nettie did not
know why the wind went so chill to her heart after she had taken off her
shawl. She did not see the unequal sod under her feet as she went back
upon that dread and solemn road. Nothing in the world but what she had
to do occupied the throbbing heroic heart. There was nobody else to do
it. How could the