the little house. Nettie could
already hear the alarmed stirring up-stairs of the master and mistress
of the cottage; and, knowing what explanations she must give, and
all the dreadful business before her, made haste to get her strange
companions away before Mrs Smith came down-stairs. One of them, however,
as he followed his comrades out of the room, from some confused instinct
of help and pity, asked whether he should not fetch a doctor? The question
struck the resolute little girl with a pang sharper than this morning's
horror had yet given her. Had she perhaps neglected the first duty of
all, the possibility of restoration? She went back, without answering
him, to lift the shawl from that dreadful face, and satisfy herself
whether she had done, that last irremediable wrong to Fred. As she met
the dreadful stare of those dead eyes, all the revulsion of feeling
which comes to the hearts of the living in presence of the dead
overpowered Nettie. She gave a little cry of inarticulate momentary
anguish. The soul of that confused and tremulous outcry was Pardon!
pardon! What love was ever so true, what tenderness so constant and
unfailing, that did not instinctively utter that cry when the watched
life had ended, and pardon could no longer come from those sealed lips?
Nettie had not loved that shamed and ruined man--she had done him the
offices of affection, and endured and sometimes scorned him. She stood
remorseful by his side in that first dread hour, which had changed
Fred's shabby presence into something awful; and her generous soul
burst forth in that cry of penitence which every human creature owes
its brother. The tender-hearted bargeman who had asked leave to
fetch a doctor, drew near her with a kindred instinct--"Don't take on,
miss--there's the crowner yet--and a deal to look to," said the kind
rough fellow, who knew Nettie. The words recalled her to herself--but
with the softened feelings of the moment a certain longing for somebody
to stand by her in this unlooked-for extremity came over the forlorn
courageous creature, who never yet, amid all her labours, had encountered
an emergency like this. She laid the shawl reverently back over that
dead face, and sent a message to the doctor with lips that trembled in
spite of herself. "Tell him what has happened, and say he is to come as
soon as he can," said Nettie; "for I do not understand all that has to
be done. Tell him I sent you; and now go--please go before the