At last the poor mother could no longer stop in her cottage, suspense was more than she could bear; she could not sleep, she could not rest, she lighted her little lamp and went forth into the darkness, in the faint hope of meeting her son.
Chill fell the night rain upon the slight form of the widow. Even to herself, it seemed as if she were bound on a useless errand, and yet her heart impelled her to go on. Her steps were on withered autumn leaves which the night wind blew over her path; their rustle as they fell was the only sound which reached the ear of the mother. Twice she stopped and half resolved to go back, then went on her dark dreary way.
Presently the gaze of the widow fell on a dark object indistinctly seen on the road; Mrs. Carey's heart throbbed faster, and she quickened her steps. The light of her lamp fell on something which seemed at once to stop the beating of that heart altogether, and to curdle the very blood in her veins!
Then from her lips burst a loud wild cry for help, a cry which startled and aroused sleepers in the cottage next to her own, so piercing and shrill it sounded on the still midnight air. In a few minutes, but to the mother they seemed like hours, forms were seen hurrying through the darkness, and kindly voices answered the repeated cry for aid. Widow Carey was found kneeling on the road by the senseless body of her son, supporting his head upon her knees, and, with trembling fingers, trying to staunch the blood which flowed from a deep gash in the young man's brow.
[CHAPTER V.]
Sickness and Sorrow.
A TIME of heavy tribulation to the widow followed the horrors of that night. John Carey was not indeed killed, the spark of life glimmered still, but he lay for weeks in a dangerous state, sometimes buried in stupor, sometimes raving with fever, never able to give a clear account of what had occurred.
It was evident that he had been the victim to violence; the fact of his having gone to London to cash a cheque for a considerable sum was soon known far and wide, and it was, of course, concluded that the "young lion" had been waylaid on his return home, and robbed of the money.
Search was made at once for the man who had committed the crime, a reward was offered for his apprehension. Suspicion fell upon Soames, who was proved to have heard from John's own lips of the cheque, and whose character and wretched circumstances made him appear one not unlikely to have committed an act of violence to save himself from destitution. The sudden disappearance of Soames from the neighbourhood confirmed the suspicion; but the wretched man succeeded in eluding pursuit; he was reserved to suffer, at a later period, the punishment due for other crimes.
In anguish, the widow watched and prayed by the bedside of her suffering son, imploring God, day and night, to spare his life and his reason. The crisis was over at length; the fever was subdued, consciousness returned, but the once powerful young man lay weak and helpless as a child. His tawny locks shorn away, the bandage over his brow, his eye dim, his cheek hollow, who, in that languid invalid, would have recognised the "young lion!"