In an agony that mocks description, Agnes clasped him to her heart, and awaited in trembling agitation the approach of the keepers.—"Hear me! hear me!" she cried; "I conjure you to leave him to my care: He is my father, and you may safely trust him with me."—"Your father!" replied one of the men; "and what then, child? You could do nothing for him, and you should be thankful to us, young woman, for taking him off your hands.—So come along, master, come along," he continued, seizing Fitzhenry, who could with difficulty be separated from Agnes,—while another of the keepers, laughing as he beheld her wild anguish, said, "We shall have the daughter as well as the father soon, I see, for I do not believe there is a pin to choose between them."
But severe as the sufferings of Agnes were already, a still greater pang awaited her. The keepers finding it a very difficult task to confine Fitzhenry, threw him down, and tried by blows to terrify him into acquiescence. At this outrage Agnes became frantic indeed, and followed them with shrieks, entreaties, and reproaches; while the struggling victim called on her to protect him, as they bore him by violence along, till, exhausted with anguish and fatigue, she fell insensible on the ground, and lost in a deep swoon the consciousness of her misery.
When she recovered her senses all was still around her, and she missed her child. Then hastily rising, and looking round with renewed phrensy, she saw it lying at some distance from her, and on taking it up she found that it was in a deep sleep. The horrid apprehension immediately rushed on her mind, that such a sleep in the midst of cold so severe was the sure forerunner of death.
"Monster!" she exclaimed, "destroyer of thy child, as well as father!—But perhaps it is not yet too late, and my curse is not completed."—So saying, she ran, or rather flew, along the road; and seeing a house at a distance she made towards it, and, bursting open the door, beheld a cottager and his family at breakfast:—then, sinking on her knees, and holding out to the woman of the house her sleeping boy, "For the love of God," she cried, "look here! look here! Save him! O save him!"
A mother appealing to the heart of a mother is rarely unsuccessful in her appeal.—The cottager's wife was as eager to begin the recovery of the child of Agnes as Agnes herself, and in a moment the whole family was employed in its service; nor was it long before they were rewarded for their humanity by its complete restoration.
The joy of Agnes was frantic as her grief had been.—She embraced them all by turns, in a loud voice invoked blessings on their heads, and promised, if she was ever rich, to make their fortune:—lastly, she caught the still languid boy to her heart, and almost drowned it in her tears.
In the cottager and his family a scene like this excited wonder as well as emotion. He and his wife were good parents; they loved their children,—would have been anxious during their illness, and would have sorrowed for their loss: but to these violent expressions and actions, the result of cultivated sensibility, they were wholly unaccustomed, and could scarcely help imputing them to insanity,—an idea which the pale cheek and wild look of Agnes strongly confirmed; nor did it lose strength when Agnes, who in terror at her child's danger and joy for his safety had forgotten even her father and his situation, suddenly recollecting herself, exclaimed, "Have I dared to rejoice?—Wretch that I am! Oh! no;—there is no joy for me!" The cottager and his wife, on hearing these words, looked significantly at each other.
Agnes soon after started up, and, clasping her hands, cried out, "O my father! my dear, dear father! thou art past cure; and despair must be my portion."
"Oh! you are unhappy because your father is ill," observed the cottager's wife; "but do not be so sorrowful on that account, he may get better perhaps."
"Never, never," replied Agnes;—"yet who knows?"