again between the farmhouse where lived the mother of his wife and his
own mill, but had discovered no traces of his little one. He called up
men from a cottage or two that he passed. He got help from the farm to
which the child had gone. As the hours passed he became more hopeless.
He expected one thing only—to find his child’s body, for he deemed it
impossible for her to be alive under the circumstances. If she had
strayed on the Wold, there was no house on the Downs into which she could
have been received.
The condition of mind of Mrs. Thacker was worse than that of her
husband. He was battling with the storm, searching; she was condemned to
inactivity, could only bow and pray, have hot water ready, bricks heated,
in the event of her child’s return, to bathe her, to place against her
body to restore heat.
Once she was frightened. She heard a crash against the front door, a
blow that near beat it in, and then all was still. What was it? Dare she
open? Then she supposed there had been a fall of a mass of snow from the
roof, and that this had produced the sound. Ten minutes later she heard
voices—her husband and the men returning—and she ran to the door to throw
it open, and ask news. As she did so, something—a great heap of snow, but
something tender, something on which the snow had heaped itself, fell
inwards.
A cry! Mrs. Thacker stooped, Jim ran up with the lantern. It was Crazy
Jane, with the child in her arms. The child asleep, and Jane—dead.
How and where the silly girl had found Mabel was never known. All the
child could remember was, that Jane had discovered her as she rambled
about in the snow, and that Jane had carried her till she fell asleep.
How far Jane had wandered, how far borne the heavy burden, could not be
told, but it must have been far, for she had died of over-exhaustion at
the very moment when she had reached the door of the house, the outside
of which she had watched for many years, the inside of which she had not
been allowed for long to enter.
And so—faithful to the last—the poor dull-minded creature had repaid in
good measure, pressed down and running over, the little acts of kindness
shown her in years gone by, by Jim at school, and Jim by the pool, and
Jim at home, defending her from children, from the swan, and last, but
not least, from his wife.
THE END
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
Edinburgh & London
End of Project Gutenberg's In a Quiet Village, by Sabine Baring-Gould