"Richard! Richard!"
Again and again that sharp, wild voice rang out on the night, only answered by more awful stillness and the silence of hopeless listening.
Thus, for one dark hour, that poor creature, shivering, pallid, and wet, paced up and down the shore, dragging her sodden garments through the dense herbage, and calling out whenever she paused in her moaning, "Richard! Richard! Richard!"
At length this cry sounded for the last time, long and low, like the plaint of a wounded night-bird; but there was no reply, and if anything, living or dead, arose to the surface of those inky waters after that, God alone saw it.
Judith Hart had wandered there, it might have been a minute, or an eternity, for anything she knew of time; but the black silence drove her away at last. She went into the denser portion of the wilderness, and came out by the farm-house in which the parents of Richard Storms lay sleeping peacefully, for their son had left them for the fair held in a neighboring town that morning, and they did not expect him home before another day.
Judith turned from her route, for she took no path, and went up to the door of this house, beating against it with her hands. After a while a bolt was drawn, and an old woman, wearing a shawl over her night dress, looked out, but half closed the door again when she saw a strange female, with a face like death, and long wet hair streaming down her back, staring at her. Twice this figure attempted to speak, but that which she tried to say choked her until the words broke out in spasms:
"You are his mother. He tried to save me. I was in the Black Lake, sinking; he plunged after me, but went down, down. I tried to drag him up. Three times, three times I went headforemost into the darkness. All night long I have been calling for him, but he would not answer. Do not think he was angry with me. No one must think that. It was to save me. Only to save me, he was trying."
The old woman held a candle in her hand. It began to shake as she said:
"Who are you speaking of? Who are you?"
"Of him—he loved me—I was to be his wife, and he was bringing me here, only we stopped at the lake and I fell in. After that, I could not find him; dive down as I would, he went deeper still. I called out till my breath failed; but he would not answer. My husband—you know."