ome yet. If it was any other girl I should
not feel uneasy, for I should make up my mind that there was extra work
to be done in a hurry, and that they were keeping her late, and I should
go to bed. But Mary is so unfortunate in everything that happens to her,
and her own melancholy talk about herself keeps hanging on my mind so,
that I have fears on her account which would not distress me about any
one else. It seems inexcusably silly to think such a thing, much more
to write it down; but I have a kind of nervous dread upon me that some
accident--

What does that loud knocking at the street door mean? And those voices
and heavy footsteps outside? Some lodger who has lost his key, I
suppose. And yet, my heart--What a coward I have become all of a sudden!

More knocking and louder voices. I must run to the door and see what it
is. Oh, Mary! Mary! I hope I am not going to have another fright about
you, but I feel sadly like it.

March 8th.

March 9th.

March 10th.

March 11th. Oh me! all the troubles I have ever had in my life are as
nothing to the trouble I am in now. For three days I have not been able
to write a single line in this journal, which I have kept so regularly
ever since I was a girl. For three days I have not once thought of
Robert--I, who am always thinking of him at other times.

My poor, dear, unhappy Mary! the worst I feared for you on that night
when I sat up alone was far below the dreadful calamity that has really
happened. How can I write about it, with my eyes full of tears and my
hand all of a tremble? I don't even know why I am sitting down at my
desk now, unless it is habit that keeps me to my old every-day task,
in spite of all the grief and fear which seem to unfit me entirely for
performing it.

The people of the house were asleep and lazy on that dreadful night,
and I was the first to open the door. Never, never could I describe in
writing, or even say in plain talk, though it is so much easier, what I
felt when I saw two policemen come in, carrying between them what seemed
to me to be a dead girl, and that girl Mary! I caught hold of her, and
gave a scream that must have alarmed the whole house; for frightened
people came crowding downstairs in their night-dresses. There was a
dreadful confusion and noise of loud talking, but I heard nothing
and saw nothing till I had got her into my room and laid on my bed. I
stooped down, frantic-like, to kiss her, and saw an awful mark of a b