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’d better go home, an to yer bed—­yer can’t do no good.’

‘I’ll wait for Mary Anne,’ said John, in a shaking whisper—­’I’ll wait for Mary Anne.’

And he stood at the doorway leaning on his stick; his weak and reddened eyes fixed on his cousin, his mouth open feebly.

But Mary Anne, weeping, beckoned to another woman who had come up with the little procession, and they began their last offices.

‘Let us go,’ said the doctor, kindly, his hand on Isaac’s shoulder, ‘till they have done.’

At that moment Watson, throwing a last professional glance round the room, perceived the piece of torn paper propped against the glass.  Ah! there was the letter.  There was always a letter.

He walked forward, glanced at it and handed it to Isaac.  Isaac drew his hand across his brow in bewilderment, then seemed to recognise the handwriting and thrust it into his pocket without a word.

Watson touched his arm.

‘Don’t you destroy it,’ he said in warning; ’it’ll be asked for at the inquest.’

The men descended.  Watson and the doctor departed.

John and Isaac were left alone in the kitchen.  Isaac hung over the fire, which had been piled up in the hope of restoring warmth to the drowned woman.  Suddenly he took out the letter and, bending his head to the blaze, began to read it.