light he saw a dark figure stoop over the well; he heard something
flung aside, which fell upon the snow with a thud; then the figure
sprang upon the coping of the well.

He ran with all his speed, his face beaten by the wind and sleet. But
he was too late. A sharp cry pierced the night. As he reached the
well, and hung over it, he heard, or thought he heard, a groan, a
beating of the water--then no more.

Isaac's shouts for help attracted the notice of a neighbour who was
sitting up with her daughter and a new-born child. She roused her
son-in-law and his boy, and, through them, a score of others, deep
night though it was.

Watson was among the first of those who gathered round the well. He
and others lowered Isaac with ropes into its icy depths, and drew him
up again, while the snow beat upon them all--the straining men--the two
dripping shapes emerging from the earth. A murmur of horror greeted
the first sight of that marred face on Isaac's arm, as the lanterns
fell upon it. For there was a gash above the eye, caused by a
projection in the hard chalk side of the well, which of itself spoke
death.

Isaac carried her in, and laid her down before the still glowing
hearth. A shudder ran through him as he knelt, bending over her. The
new wound had effaced all the traces of Timothy's blow. How long was
it since she had stood there before him pointing to it? The features
were already rigid. No one felt the smallest hope. Yet, with that
futile tenderness all can show to the dead, everything was tried. Mary
Anne Waller came--white and speechless--and her deft, gentle hands did
whatever the village doctor told her. And there were many other women,
too, who did their best. Some of them, had Bessie dared to live, would
have helped with all their might to fill her cup of punishment to the
brim. Now that she had thrown herself on death as her only friend,
they were dissolved in pity.

Everything failed. Bessie had meant to die, and she had not missed her
aim. There came a moment when the doctor, laying his ear for the last
time to her cold breast, raised himself to bid the useless effort cease.

"Send them all away," he said to the little widow, "and you stay."

Watson helped to clear the room, then he and Isaac carried the dead
woman upstairs. An old man followed them, a bent and broken being, who
dragged himself up the steps with his stick; Watson out of compassion
came back to help him.

"John--yer