"There is a light, that's sartin," he said joyfully, settling himself in his wet clothes and making a start for the hill; but directly he turned back again.
"If she's so near gone as you speak on, Mister James, it wouldn't be of no use for me to go up there for help—she'd be chilled through and through, till there was no bringing her back, long afore I could half-way climb the hill!"
"I fear it, I fear it!" said Harrington, looking mournfully down on the white face at his feet, "God help her!"
"See," said Ben stretching forth his hand towards the burning cedar, "God Almighty has gin us light and fire close by—the grass is crisped and dried up all around that tree. What if we carry the madam there? I'll go up the hill with a heart in it arter that!"
Ben stooped as if about to take the cold form of his mistress in his arms, but as his hands touched her garments some inward restraint fell upon him, and he drew back, looking wistfully from Harrington to the prostrate woman he dared not raise from the earth even in her extremity.
As he stooped a strange light had flashed into James Harrington's eyes, and he made a motion as if to push the poor boatman aside.
Ben did not see this, as we have said, his retreat was a voluntary impulse. He saw James Harrington take up the form he dared not touch, with a feeling of deep humiliation, submitting to the abrupt and stern manner which accompanied the action, as a well deserved rebuke for his boldness.
A small ravine separated the point of land occupied by the little party from the burning cedar, and towards this Harrington bore his silent burden. His cheeks grew deadly pale from a feeling deeper than fear or cold, and his eyes flashed back the gleams of light that reached him from the burning tree with a wild splendor that no mortal man had ever seen in them before.
He held Mabel closer and closer to his heart, which rose and heaved beneath its burden; his breath came in broken volumes from his chest, and an insane belief seized upon him, that though dead he could arouse her from that icy sleep, by forcing the breath of his own abundant existence through her lips.
Fired by this wild thought he bowed his head nearer and nearer to the pallid face upon his shoulder. But the voice of Ben Benson brought him back to sanity again.