V
I did not go to sleep for some time. I had a picture of Ellen Mary before my eyes, and I could still hear that steady pat, patter, drip, of the rain on the beech leaves.
In the night I awoke suddenly, and thought I heard a long, wailing cry out on the Common. I got up and looked out of the window, but I could see nothing. The rain was still falling, but there was a blur of light that showed where the moon was shining behind the clouds. The cry, if there had been a cry, was not repeated.
I went back to bed and soon fell asleep again.
I do not know whether I had been dreaming, but I woke suddenly with a presentation of the little pond on the Common very clear before me.
“We never looked in the pond,” I thought, and then—“but he could not have fallen into the pond; besides, it’s not two feet deep.”
It was full daylight, and I got up and found that it was nearly seven o’clock.
The rain had stopped, but there was a scurry of low, threatening cloud that blew up from the south.
I dressed at once and went out. I made my way directly to the Stotts’ cottage.
The lamp was still burning and the door open, but Ellen Mary had fallen forward on to the table; her head was pillowed on her arms.
“There is a limit to our endurance,” I reflected, “and she has reached it.”
I left her undisturbed.
Outside I met two of Farmer Bates’s labourers going back to work.
“I want you to come up with me to the pond,” I said.