girl help but execute the work put into her hand?
Thinking neither of the hardship nor the horror of such dread work
falling to her lot, but only this, that she must do it, Nettie took home
to the unconscious sleeping cottage that thing which was Fred Rider; no
heavier on his bearers' hands to-day than he had been already for years
of his wasted life.

CHAPTER X.

When Nettie opened the door of the sleeping house with the great key she
had carried with her in her early dreadful expedition, there was still
nobody stirring in the unconscious cottage. She paused at the door, with
the four men behind her carrying shoulder-high that terrible motionless
burden. Where was she to lay it? In her own room, where she had not slept
that night, little Freddy was still sleeping. In another was the widow,
overcome by watching and fretful anxiety. The other fatherless creatures
lay in the little dressing-room. Nowhere but in the parlour, from which
Fred not so very long ago had driven his disgusted brother--the only
place she had where Nettie's own feminine niceties could find expression,
and where the accessories of her own daily life and work were all
accumulated. She lingered even at that dread moment with a pang of
natural reluctance to associate that little sanctuary with the horror
and misery of this bringing-home; but when every feeling gave way to the
pressure of necessity, that superficial one was not like to resist it.
Her companions were not aware that she had hesitated even for that
moment. She seemed to them to glide softly, steadfastly, without any
faltering, before them into the little silent womanly room, where her
night's work was folded tidily upon the table, and her tiny thimble and
scissors laid beside it. What a heart-rending contrast lay between those
domestic traces and that dreadful muffled figure, covered from the light
of day with Nettie's shawl, which was now laid down there, Nettie did
not pause to think of. She stood still for a moment, gazing at it with
a sob of excitement and agitation swelling into her throat; scarcely
grief--perhaps that was not possible--but the intensest remorseful
pity over the lost life. The rude fellows beside her stood silent, not
without a certain pang of tenderness and sympathy in their half-savage
hearts. She took her little purse out and emptied it of its few silver
coins among them. They trod softly, but their heavy footsteps were
heard, notwithstanding, through all