The dazed children did exactly as they were told, and the mother lay like a log on the settle.  Marcella found coal and wood under Daisy’s guidance, and soon lit the fire, piling on the fuel with a lavish hand.  Daisy brought her water, and she filled the kettle and set it on to boil, while the little girl, still sobbing at intervals like some little weeping automaton, laid the breakfast.  Then the children all crouched round the warmth, while Marcella rubbed their cold hands and feet, and “mothered” them.  Shaken as she was with emotion and horror, she was yet full of a passionate joy that this pity, this tendance was allowed to her.  The crushing weight of self-contempt had lifted.  She felt morally free and at ease.

Already she was revolving what she could do for Hurd.  It was as clear as daylight to her that there had been no murder but a free fight—­an even chance between him and Westall.  The violence of a hard and tyrannous man had provoked his own destruction—­so it stood, for her passionate protesting sense.  That at any rate must be the defence, and some able man must be found to press it.  She thought she would write to the Cravens and consult them.  Her thoughts carefully avoided the names both of Aldous Raeburn and of Wharton.

She was about to make the tea when some one knocked at the door.  It proved to be Hurd’s sister, a helpless woman, with a face swollen by crying, who seemed to be afraid to come into the cottage, and afraid to go near her sister-in-law.  Marcella gave her money, and sent her for some eggs to the neighbouring shop, then told her to come back in half an hour and take charge.  She was an incapable, but there was nothing better to be done.  “Where is Miss Harden?” she asked the woman.  The answer was that ever since the news came to the village the rector and his sister had been with Mrs. Westall and Charlie Dyne’s mother.  Mrs. Westall had gone into fit after fit; it had taken two to hold her, and Charlie’s mother, who was in bed recovering from pneumonia, had also been very bad.

Again Marcella’s heart contracted with rage rather than pity.  Such wrack and waste of human life, moral and physical! for what?  For the protection of a hateful sport which demoralised the rich and their agents, no less than it tempted and provoked the poor!

When she had fed and physically comforted the children, she went and knelt down beside Mrs. Hurd, who still lay with closed eyes in heavy-breathing stupor.

“Dear Mrs. Hurd,” she said, “I want you to drink this tea and eat something.”

The half-stupefied woman signed refusal.  But Marcella insisted.

“You have got to fight for your husband’s life,” she said firmly, “and to look after your children.  I must go in a very short time, and before I go you must tell me all that you can of this business.  Hurd would tell you to do it.  He knows and you know that I am to be trusted.  I want to save him.  I shall get a good lawyer to help him.  But first you must take this—­and then you must talk to me.”