The company began to arrive at four o'clock. The snow had ceased to
fall; it was a fine, cold, clear evening, the moon very bright. A large
store-room at the back of the house had been cleared out, and a huge
fire made in it. The walls were decorated with evergreens, and tin
sconces holding candles; benches from the school-house were ranged
underneath them. This was to be the principal play-room, but the other
rooms were open. Mrs. Hill (formerly Mrs. Garth, who had not so very
long before lost poor David) and Maria Lease came up by invitation to
help Miss Timmens with the children; and Mrs. Trewin would have come but
for her fall on the slide. Miss Timmens appeared in full feather: a
purple gown of shot silk, with a red waist-band, and red holly berries
in her lace cap. The children, timid at first, sat round on the forms in
prim stillness, just like so many mice.
By far the most timid of all was a gentle little thing of seven years
old, got up like a lady; white frock, black sash and sleeve ribbons. She
was delicate-featured, blue-eyed, had curling flaxen hair. It was Nettie
Trewin. Far superior she looked to all of them; out of place, in fact,
amongst so many coarser natures. Her little arm and hand trembled as she
clung to Miss Timmens' gown.
"Senseless little thing," cried Miss Timmens, "to be afraid in a
beautiful room like this, and with all these kind friends around her!
Would you believe it, Mr. Johnny, that I could hardly get her here?
Afraid, she said, to come without mother!"
"Oh, Nettie! Why, you are going to have lots of fun! Is mother better
this evening?"
"Yes," whispered Nettie, venturing to take a peep at me through her wet
eyelashes.
The order of the day was this. Tea at once, consisting of as much
bread-and-butter and plum-cake as they could eat; games afterwards. The
savoury pies and tartlets later on; more cake to wind up with, which, if
they had no room for, they might carry home.
After all signs of tea had disappeared, and our neighbours, the Coneys,
had come in, and several round rings were seated on the floor at
"Hunt-the-Slipper," I, chancing to draw within earshot, found Miss
Timmens had opened out her grievance to the Squire--the parson's
interference with the school.
"It would be reversing the proper and natural order of things, as _I_
look upon it," she was saying, "to give an exalted education to those
who must get their living by the sweat of their brow; as servants, and
what not. Do you think so, sir?"
"Think so! of course I think so," spluttered the Squire, taking up the
subject hotly as usual. "It's good for them to read and write well, to
add up figures, and know how to sew and clean, and wash and iron. That's
the learning they want, whether they are to pass their lives serving in
families, or as the wives of working men."
"Yes, sir," acquiesced Miss Timmens, in a glow of satisfaction; "but
you may as well try to beat common sense into a broomstick as into Mr.
Bruce. The other day--what, is it you again, Nettie!" she broke off, as
the little white-robed child sidled up and hid her head in what appeared
to be her haven of refuge--the folds of the purple gown. "Never was such
a child as this, for shyness. When put to play with the rest, she'll not
stay with them. What do you think you are good for?"--rather wrathfully.
"Do you suppose the gentlefolk are going to eat you, Nettie?"
"There's nothing to be afraid of, little lassie. What child is it?"
added the Squire, struck with her appearance.
"Tell your name to the Squire," said Miss Timmens, with authority. And
the little one lifted her pretty blue eyes appealingly to his face, as
if beseeching him not to bite her.
"It's Nettie Trewin, sir," she said in a whisper.
"Dear me! Is that poor Trewin's child! She has a look of her father too.
A delicate little maid."
"And silly also," added Miss Timmens. "You came here to play, you know,
Nettie; not hide your face. What are they all stirring at, now? Oh,
going to have 'Puss-in-the-corner.' You can play at that, Nettie. Here,
Jane Bright! Take Nettie with you and attend to her. Find her a corner:
she has not had any play at all."
A tall, awkward girl stepped up: slouching shoulders, narrow forehead,
stolid features, coarse hair all ruffled; thick legs, thick boots--Miss
Jane Bright. She seized Nettie's hand.
"Yes, sir, you are right: the child is a delicate, dainty little thing,
quite a contrast to most of these other girls," resumed Miss Timmens,
in answer to the Squire. "Look at that one who has just fetched Nettie
away: she is only a type of the rest. They come, most of them, of
coarse, stupid parents, and will be no better to the end of the chapter,
whatever education you may try to hammer into them. As I said to Mr.
Bruce the other day when---- Well, I never! There he is!"
The young parson caught her eye, as he was looming in. Long coat,
clerical waistcoat, no white tie to speak of round his bare neck; quite
à la mode. The new fashions and the new notions that Mr. Bruce went in
for, were not at all understood at North Crabb.
The Squire had gone on at first against the party; but no face was more
sunshiny than his, now that he was in the thick of it. A select few of
the children, with ours and the little Lawsons, had appropriated the
dining-room for "Hunt-the-Whistle." The pater chanced to look in just
before it began, and we got him to be the hunter. I shall never forget
it as long as I live. I don't believe I had ever laughed as much before.
He did not know the play, or the trick of it: and to see him whirling
himself about in search of the whistle as it was blown behind his back,
now seizing on this bold whistler, believing he or she must be in
possession of the whistle, and now on that one, all unconscious that the
whistle was fastened to the back button of his own coat; and to look at
the puzzled wonder of his face as to where the whistle could possibly
be, and how it contrived to elude his grasp, was something to be
remembered. The shrieks of laughter might have been heard down at the
Ravine. Tod had to sit on the floor and hold his sides; Tom Coney was in
convulsions.
"Ah--I--ah--what do you think, Mr. Todhetley?" began Bruce, with his
courteous drawl, catching the Squire, as he emerged later, red and
steaming, from the whistle-hunt. "Suppose I collect these young ones
around me and give them a quarter-of-an-hour's lecture on pneumatics?
I've been getting up the subject a little."
"Pneumatics be hanged!" burst forth the pater, more emphatically than
politely, when he had taken a puzzled stare at the parson. "The young
ones have come here to _play_, not to have their brains addled. Be shot
if I quite know myself what 'pneumatics' means. I beg your pardon,
Bruce. You mean well, I know."
"Pneumatics!" repeated old Coney, taking time to digest the word. "Don't
you think, parson, that's more in the department of the Astronomer
Royal?"
One required a respite after the whistle-hunt. I put my back against the
wall in the large room, and watched the different sets of long tails,
then pulling fiercely at "Oranges and Lemons." Mrs. Hill and Maria Lease
sat side by side on one of the benches, both looking as sad as might be,
their memories, no doubt, buried in the past. Maria Lease had never, so
to say, worn a smiling countenance since the dreadful end of Daniel
Ferrar.
A commotion! Half-a-dozen of the "lemons," pulling too fiercely, had
come to grief on the ground. Maria went to the rescue.
"I was just thinking of poor David, sir," Mrs. Hill said to me, with a
sigh. "How he would have enjoyed this scene: so merry and bright!"
"But he is in a brighter scene than this, you know."
"Yes, Master Johnny, I do know it," she said, tears trickling slowly
down her cheeks. "Where he is, all things are beautiful."
In her palmy days Mrs. Todhetley used to sing a song, of which this was
the first verse:--
"All that's bright must fade,
The brightest still the fleetest;
All that's sweet was made
But to be lost when sweetest."
Mrs. Hill's words brought this song to my memory, and with it the
damping reminder that nothing lasts in this world, whether of pleasure
or brightness. All things must fade, or die: but in that better life to
come they will last for ever. And David had entered upon it.
* * * * *
"Now, where's that senseless little Nettie?"
The words, spoken sharply, came from Miss Timmens. But if she did
possess a sharp-toned tongue, she was good and kind at heart. The
young crew were sitting down at the long table to the savoury pies and
tartlets; Miss Timmens, taking stock of them, missed Nettie.
"Jane Bright, go and find Nettie Trewin."
Not daring to disobey the curt command, but looking as though she feared
her portion of the good things would be eaten up during her absence,
Jane Bright disappeared. Back she came in a brace of shakes, saying
Nettie "was not there."
"Maria Lease, where's Nettie Trewin?" asked Miss Timmens.
Maria turned from the table. "Nettie Trewin?" she repeated, looking
about her. "I don't know. She must be somewhere or other."
"I wish to goodness you'd find her then."
Maria Lease could not see anything of the child. "Nettie Trewin" was
called out high and low; but it brought forth no response. The servants
were sent to look over the house, with no better result.
"She is hiding somewhere in her shyness," said Miss Timmens. "I have a
great mind to punish her for this."
"She can't have got into the rain-water butt?" suggested the Squire.
"Molly, go and look."
It was not very likely: as the barrel was quite six feet high. But, as
the Squire once got into the water-butt to hid himself when he was a
climbing youngster, and had reasons for anticipating a whipping, his
thoughts naturally flew to it.
"Well, she must be somewhere," cried he when we laughed at him. "She
could not sink through the floor."
"Who saw her last?" repeated Miss Timmens. "Do you hear, children? Just
stop eating for a minute, and answer."
Much discussion--doubt--cross-questioning. The whole lot seemed to be
nearly as stupid as owls. At last, so far as could be gathered, none of
them had noticed Nettie since they began "Puss-in-the-corner."
"Jane Bright, I told you to take Nettie to play with the rest, and to
find her a corner. What did you do with her?"
Jane Bright commenced her answer by essaying to take a sly bite at her
pie. Miss Timmens stopped her midway, and turned her from the table to
face the company.
"Do you hear me? Now don't stand staring like a gaby! Just answer."
Like a "gaby" did Jane Bright stand: mouth wide open, eyes round,
countenance bewildered.
"Please, governess, I didn't do nothing with her."
"You must have done something with her: you held her hand."
"I didn't do nothing," repeated the girl, shaking her head stolidly.
"Now, that won't do, Jane Bright. Where did you leave her?"
"'Twas in the corner," answered Jane Bright, apparently making desperate
efforts of memory. "When I was Puss, and runned across and came back
again, I didn't see her there."
"Surely, the child has not stolen out by herself and run off home!"
cried Mrs. Coney: and the schoolmistress took up the suggestion.
"It is the very thought that has been in my mind the last minute or
two," avowed she. "Yes, Mrs. Coney, that's it, depend upon it. She has
decamped through the snow and gone back to her mother's."
"Then she has gone without her things," interposed Maria Lease, who was
entering the room with a little black cloak and bonnet in her hand. "Are
not these Nettie's things, children?" And a dozen voices all speaking
together, hastened to say Yes, they were Nettie's.
"Then she must be in the house," decided Miss Timmens. "She wouldn't be
silly enough to go out this cold night with her neck and arms bare. The
child has her share of sense. She has run away to hide herself, and may
have dropped asleep."
"It must be in the chimbleys, then," cried free Molly from the back of
the room. "We've looked everywhere else."
"You had better look again," said the Squire. "Take plenty of light--two
or three candles."
It seemed rather a queer thing. And, while this talking had been going
on, there flashed into my mind the old Modena story, related by the poet
Rogers, of the lovely young heiress of the Donatis: and which has been
embodied in our song "The Mistletoe Bough." Could this timid child have
imprisoned herself in any place that she was unable to get out of? Going
to the kitchen for a candle, I went upstairs, taking the garret first,
with its boxes and lumber, and then the rooms. And nowhere could I find
the least trace or sign of Nettie.
Stepping into the kitchen to leave the candle, there stood Luke
Mackintosh, whiter than death; his back propped against Molly's press,
his hands trembling, his hair on end. Tod stood in front of him
suppressing his laughter. Mackintosh had just burst in at the back-door
in a desperate state of fright, declaring he had seen a ghost.
It's not the first time I have mentioned the man's cowardice. Believing
in ghosts and goblins, wraiths and witches, he could hardly be persuaded
to cross Crabb Ravine at night, on account of the light sometimes seen
there. Sensible people told him that this light (which, it was true, no
one had ever traced to its source) was nothing but a will-o'-the-wisp,
an ignis-fatuus arising from the vapour; but Luke could not be brought
to reason. On this evening it chanced that the Squire had occasion to
send Mackintosh to the Timberdale post-office, and the man had now just
come in from the errand.
"I see the light, too, sir," he was saying to Tod in a scared voice, as
he ran his shaking hand through his hair. "It be dodging about on the
banks of the Ravine for all the world like a corpse-candle. Well, sir,
I didn't like that, and I got up out of the Ravine as fast as my legs
would bring me, and were making straight for home here, with my head
down'ards, not wanting to see nothing more, when something dreadful met
me. All in white, it was."
"A man in his shroud, who had left his grave to take a moonlight walk,"
said Tod, gravely, biting his lips.
"'Twere in grave-clothes, for sure; a long, white garment, whiter than
the snow. I'd not say but it was Daniel Ferrar," added Luke, in the low
dread tones that befitted the dismal subject. "His ghost do walk, you
know, sir."
"And where did his ghost go to?"
"Blest if I saw, sir," replied Mackintosh, shaking his head. "I'd not
have looked after it for all the world. 'Twarn't a slow pace I come at,
over the field, after that, and right inside this here house."
"Rushing like the wind, I suppose."
"My heart was all a-throbbing and a-skeering. Mr. Joseph, I _hope_ the
Squire won't send me through the Ravine after dark again! I couldn't
stand it, sir; I'd a'most rather give up my place."
"You'll not be fit for this place, or any other, I should say,
Mackintosh, if you let this sort of fear run away with your senses," I
put in. "You saw nothing; it was all fancy."
"Saw nothing!" repeated Mackintosh in the excess of desperation. "Why,
Mr. Johnny, I never saw a sight plainer in all my born days. A great,
white, awesome apparition it were, that went rushing past me with a
wailing sound. I hope you won't ever have the ill-luck to see such a
thing yourself, sir."
"I'm sure I shan't."
"What's to do here?" asked Tom Coney, putting in his head.
"Mackintosh has seen a ghost."
"Seen a ghost!" cried Tom, beginning to grin.
Mackintosh, trembling yet, entered afresh on the recital, rather
improving it by borrowing Tod's mocking suggestion. "A dead man in his
shroud come out walking from his grave in the churchyard--which he
feared might be Ferrar, lying on the edge on't, just beyond consecrated
ground. I never could abear to go by the spot where he was put in, and
never a prayer said over him, Mr. Tom!"
But, in spite of the solemnity of the subject, touching Ferrar, Tom
Coney could only have his laugh out. The servants came in from their
fruitless search of the dairy and cellars, and started to see the state
of Mackintosh.
"Give him a cup of warm ale, Molly," was Tod's command. And we left them
gathered round the man, listening to his tale with open mouths.
From the fact that Nettie Trewin was certainly not in the house, one
only deduction could be drawn--that the timid child had run home to her
mother. Bare-headed, bare-necked, bare-armed, she had gone through the
snow; and, as Miss Timmens expressed it, might just have caught her
death.
"Senseless little idiot!" exclaimed Miss Timmens in a passion. "Sarah
Trewin is sure to blame me; she'll say I might have taken better care of
her."
But one of the elder girls, named Emma Stone, whose recollection only
appeared to come to her when digesting her supper, spoke up at this
juncture, and declared that long after "Puss-in-the-corner" was over,
and also "Oranges and Lemons," which had succeeded it, she had seen and
spoken to Nettie Trewin. Her account was, that in crossing the passage
leading from the store-room, she saw Nettie "scrouged against the wall,
half-way down the passage, like anybody afeared of being seen."
"Did you speak to her, Emma Stone?" asked Miss Timmens, after listening
to these concluding words.
"Yes, governess. I asked her why she was not at play, and why she was
hiding there."
"Well, what did she say?"
"Not anything," replied Emma Stone. "She turned her head away as if she
didn't want to be talked to."
Miss Timmens took a long, keen look at Emma Stone. This young lady,
it appeared, was rather in the habit of romancing; and the governess
thought she might be doing it then.
"I vow to goodness I saw her," interrupted the girl, before Miss Timmens
had got out more than half a doubt: and her tone was truthful enough.
"I'm not telling no story, 'm. I thought Nettie was crying."
"Well, it is a strange thing you should have forgotten it until this
moment, Emma Stone."
"Please, 'm, it were through the pies," pleaded Emma.
It was time to depart. Bonnets and shawls were put on, and the whole of
them filed out, accompanied by Miss Timmens, Mrs. Hill, and Maria Lease:
good old motherly Dame Coney saying she hoped they would find the child
safe in bed between the blankets, and that her mother would have given
her some hot drink.
Our turn for supper came now. We took it partly standing, just the fare
that the others had had, with bread-and-cheese added for the Squire
and old Coney. After that, we all gathered round the fire in the
dining-room, those two lighting their pipes.
And I think you might almost have knocked some of us down with a feather
in our surprise, when, in the midst of one of old Coney's stories, we
turned round at the sudden opening of the door, and saw Miss Timmens
amongst us. A prevision of evil seemed to seize Mrs. Todhetley, and she
rose up.
"The child! Is she not at home?"
"No, ma'am; neither has she been there," answered Miss Timmens, ignoring
ceremony (as people are apt to do at seasons of anxiety or commotion)
and sitting down uninvited. "I came back to tell you so, and to ask what
you thought had better be done."
"The child must have started for home and lost her way in the snow,"
cried the Squire, putting down his pipe in consternation. "What does the
mother think?"
"I did not tell her of it," said Miss Timmens. "I went on by myself to
her house; and the first thing I saw there, on opening the door, was a
little pair of slippers warming on the fender. 'Oh, have you brought
Nettie?' began the mother, before I could speak: 'I've got her shoes
warm for her. Is she very, very cold?--and has she enjoyed herself and
been good?' Well, sir, seeing how it was--that the child had not got
home--I answered lightly: 'Oh, the children are not here yet; my sister
and Maria Lease are with them. I've just stepped on to see how your
bruises are getting on.' For that poor Sarah Trewin is good for so
little that one does not care to alarm her," concluded Miss Timmens, as
if she would apologize for her deceit.
The Squire nodded approval, and told me to give Miss Timmens something
hot to drink. Mrs. Todhetley, looking three parts frightened out of her
wits, asked what was to be done.
Yes; what was to be done? What could be done? A sort of council was held
amongst them, some saying one thing, some another. It seemed impossible
to suggest anything.
"Had harm come to her in running home, had she fallen into the snow,
for instance, or anything of that sort, we should have seen or heard
her," observed Miss Timmens. "She would be sure to take the direct
path--the way we came here and returned."
"It might be easy enough for the child to lose her way--the roads and
fields are like a wide white plain," observed Mrs. Coney. "She might
have strayed aside amongst the trees in the triangle."
Miss Timmens shook her head in dissent.
"She'd not do that, ma'am. Since Daniel Ferrar was found there, the
children don't like the three-cornered grove."
"Look here," said old Coney, suddenly speaking up. "Let us search all
these places, and any others that she could have strayed to, right or
left, on her road home."
He rose up, and we rose with him. It was the best thing that could be
done: and no end of a relief, besides, to pitch upon something to do.
The Squire ordered Mackintosh (who had not recovered himself yet) to
bring a lantern, and we all put on our great-coats and went forth,
leaving the mater and Mrs. Coney to keep the fire warm. A black party
we looked, in the white snow, Miss Timmens making one of us.
"I can't rest," she whispered to me. "If the child has been lying on the
snow all this while, we shall find her dead."
It was a still, cold, lovely night; the moon high in the sky, the snow
lying white and pure beneath her beams. Tom Coney and Tod, all their
better feelings and their fears aroused, plunged on fiercely, now amidst
the deep snow by the hedges, now on the more level path. The grove,
which had been so fatal to poor Daniel Ferrar, was examined first. And
now we saw the use of the lantern ordered by the Squire, at which order
we had secretly laughed: for it served to light up the darker parts
where the trunks of the trees grew thick. Mackintosh, who hated that
grove, did not particularly relish his task of searching it, though he
was in good company. But it did not appear to contain Nettie.
"She would not turn in here," repeated Miss Timmens, from the depth of
her strong conviction; "I'm sure she wouldn't. She would rather bear
onwards towards her mother's."
Bounding here, trudging there, calling her name softly, shouting
loudly, we continued our search after Nettie Trewin. It was past twelve
when we got back home and met Mrs. Todhetley and Mrs. Coney at the door,
both standing there in their uneasiness, enveloped in woollen shawls.
"No. No success. Can't find her anywhere."
Down sank the Squire on one of the hall-chairs as he spoke, as though
he could not hold himself up a minute longer, but was dead beat with
tramping and disappointment. Perhaps he was. What was to be done next?
What _could_ be done? We stood round the dining-room fire, looking at
one another like so many helpless mummies.
"Well," said the pater, "the first thing is to have a drop of something
hot. I am half-frozen. What time's that?"--as the clock over the
mantelpiece chimed one stroke. "Half-past twelve."
"And she's dead by this time," gasped Miss Timmens, in a faint voice,
its sharpness gone clean out of it. "I'm thinking of the poor widowed
mother."
Mrs. Coney (often an invalid) said she could do no good by staying
longer, and wanted to be in bed. Old Coney said _he_ was not going
in yet; so Tom took her over. It might have been ten minutes after
this--but I was not taking any particular account of the time--that I
saw Tom Coney put his head in at the parlour-door, and beckon Tod out.
I went also.
"Look here," said Coney to us. "After I left mother indoors, I thought
I'd search a bit about the back-ground here: and I fancy I can see the
marks of a child's footsteps in the snow."
"No!" cried Tod, rushing out at the back-door and crossing the premises
to the field.
Yes, it was so. Just for a little way along the path leading to Crabb
Ravine the snow was much trodden and scattered by the footsteps of a
man, both to and fro. Presently some little footsteps, evidently of a
child, seemed to diverge from this path and go onwards in rather a
slanting direction through the deeper snow, as if their owner had lost
the direct way. When we had tracked these steps half-way across the
field. Tod brought himself to a halt.
"I'm sure they are Nettie's," he said. "They look like hers. Whose else
should they be? She may have fallen down the Ravine. One of you had
better go back and bring a blanket--and tell them to get hot water
ready."
Eager to be of use, Tom Coney and I ran back together. Tod continued his
tracking. Presently the little steps diverged towards the path, as if
they had suddenly discovered their wanderings from it; and then they
seemed to be lost in those other and larger footsteps which had kept
steadily to the path.
"I wonder," thought Tod, halting as he lost the clue, "whether
Mackintosh's big ghost could have been this poor little white-robed
child? What an idiotic coward the fellow is! These are his footmarks. A
slashing pace he must have travelled at, to fling the snow up in this
manner!"
At that moment, as Tod stood facing the Ravine, a light, looking
like the flame of a candle, small and clear and bright as that of a
glow-worm, appeared on the opposite bank, and seemed to dodge about the
snow-clad brushwood around the trunks of the wintry trees. What was this
light?--whence did it proceed?--what caused it? It seemed we were never
tired of putting these useless questions to ourselves. Tod did not know;
never had known. He thought of Mack's fright and of the ghost, as he
stood watching it, now disappearing in some particular spot, now coming
again at ever so many yards' distance. But ghosts had no charms for Tod:
by which I mean no alarms: and he went forward again, trying to find
another trace of the little footsteps.
"I don't see what should bring Nettie out here, though," ran his
thoughts. "Hope she has not pitched head foremost down the Ravine!
Confound the poltroon!--kicking up the snow like this!"
But now, in another minute, there were traces again. The little feet
seemed to have turned aside at a tangent, and once more sought the deep
snow. From that point he did not again lose them; they carried him to
the low and narrow dell (not much better than a ditch) which just there
skirted the hedge bordering the Ravine.
At first Tod could see nothing. Nothing but the drifted snow.
But--looking closely--what was that, almost at his feet? Was it only a
dent in the snow?--or was anything lying on it? Tod knelt down on the
deep soft white carpet (sinking nearly up to his waist) and peered and
felt.
There she was: Nettie Trewin! With her flaxen curls fallen about her
head and mingling with the snow, and her little arms and neck exposed,
and her pretty white frock all wet, she lay there in the deep hole. Tod,
his breast heaving with all manner of emotion, gathered her into his
arms, as gently as an infant is hushed to rest by its mother. The white
face had no life in it; the heart seemed to have stopped beating.
"Wake up, you poor little mite!" he cried, pressing her against his warm
side. "Wake up, little one! Wake up, little frozen snow-bird!"
But there came no response. The child lay still and white in his arms.
"Hope she's not frozen to death!" he murmured, a queer sensation taking
him. "Nettie, don't you hear me? My goodness, what's to be done?"
He set off across the field with the child, meeting me almost directly.
I ran straight up to him.
"Get out, Johnny Ludlow!" he cried roughly, in his haste and fear.
"Don't stop me! Oh, a blanket, is it? That's good. Fold it round her,
lad."
"Is she dead?"
"I'll be shot if I know."
He went along swiftly, holding her to him in the blanket. And a fine
commotion they all made when he got her indoors.
The silly little thing, unable to get over her shyness, had taken the
opportunity, when the back-door was open, to steal out of it, with the
view of running home to her mother. Confused, perhaps, by the bare white
plain; or it may be by her own timidity; or probably confounding the
back-door and its approaches with the front, by which she had entered,
she went straight across the field, unconscious that this was taking
her in just the opposite direction to her home. It was she whom Luke
Mackintosh had met--the great idiot!--and he frightened her with his
rough appearance and the bellow of fear he gave, just as much as she had
frightened him. Onwards she went, blindly terrified, was stopped by the
hedge, fell into the ditch, and lay buried in the snow. Whether she
could be brought back to life, or whether death had really taken her,
was a momentous question.
I went off for Cole, flying all the way. He sent me back again, saying
he'd be there as soon as I--and that Nettie Trewin must be a born
simpleton.
"Master Johnny!--Mr. Ludlow!--Is it you?"
The words greeted me in a weak panting voice, just as I reached the
corner by the store barn, and I recognized Mrs. Trewin. Alarmed at
Nettie's prolonged stay, she had come out, all bruised as she was, and
extorted the fact--that the child was missing--from Maria Lease. I told
her that the child was found--and where.
"Dead or alive, sir?"
I stammered in my answer. Cole would be up directly, I said, and we must
hope for the best. But she drew a worse conclusion.
"It was all I had," she murmured. "My one little ewe lamb."
"Don't cry, Mrs. Trewin. It may turn out to be all right, you know."
"If I could only have laid her poor little face on my bosom to die, and
said good-bye to her!" she wailed, the tears falling. "I have had so
much trouble in the world, Master Johnny!--and she was all of comfort
left to me in it."
We went in. Cole came rushing like a whirlwind. By-and-by they got some
warmth into the child, lying so still on the bed; and she was saved.
"Were you cold, dear, in the snow?--were you frightened?" gently asked
the mother, when Nettie could answer questions.
"I was very cold and frightened till I heard the angels' music, mother."
"The angels' music?"
"Yes. I knew they played it for me. After that, I felt happy and went to
sleep. Oh, mother, there's nothing so sweet as angels' music."
The "music" had been that of the church bells, wafted over the Ravine by
the rarefied air; the sweet bells of Timberdale, ringing in the New
Year.