"Dead," she echoed, in a voice that thrilled even that rough atmosphere with pathetic sweetness. "Dead! what, does he belong to that shore and I to this? Oh, would to God I had died also!"
Her head bent slowly downward as she spoke. With her two hands she began smoothing the wet hair back from that pale forehead. Then, as if overcome with unaccountable tenderness, she bent down her mouth and kissed it slowly, lingeringly, as the first sigh of returning life had left her bosom.
Up to that moment the young man had lain frozen lifeless, without a beat of the pulse or a flutter of the breath. As that woman's lips touched his forehead, a shudder ran visibly through what seemed marble a moment before, and a low cry broke from his lips. Life had come back to him with a pang either of pain or pleasure; no one could tell which.
"Behold," said Samuel Parris with enthusiasm, "truly our Lord has worked a miracle in behalf of this youth; for of a verity there was no life in him when his hand rested in mine a moment since."
Barbara Stafford had withdrawn her lips from his forehead; but, as his quivering eyelids opened, the look of strange tenderness with which she bent over him penetrated to every fibre of his heart. The same holy expression that had crept over her features a little time before, came to his also, bringing warmth and color, almost a smile with it.
"At last!" he murmured, like one just aroused from a dream, "at last you have come."
The words were uttered in a low murmur, but Barbara Stafford gathered them into her heart unshared by the men about her; they heard a faint moan, which spoke of returning life, nothing more.
By this time the whole group began to feel the cold insupportably. The old man, without cloak or coat, shook in all his limbs, while the sailors could hardly stand, so fierce had been their struggle with the waves.
"Tell me," said Samuel Parris, addressing one of the sailors, "to whom were you conveying this lady?—for such I take her to be."
"We do not know," answered the man; "she gave us a guinea a-piece to set her upon one of the wharves yonder before sunset; that is all we can tell you of the matter."