He looked hard at the other, who saluted very rigidly in response.
“You can do her only justice, I am sure,” said he; and bowed once more and turned on his heel.
He found the girl prostrate on her knees beside the dead body—sobbing—appealing to it—murmuring broken words of penitence and love. She had moved the napkin from the face, and Tuke saw the cunning still engraved finely about the sightless eyes, and the little close leer of covetousness at the corners of the mouth, which showed a grotesque, clownish distortion of shape in the sooty border that suffocation had painted round it. Knowing what he did, he could not bear to see her thus wasting her heart of affection on the dead, unworthy thing. He stooped, and put his arm about her, and drew the cloth once more over the face.
“Come,” he said, and helping her to her feet, pulled off his own great-coat and wrapped it about her shoulders.
At that, “No, no!” she whispered. “You will perish of the cold.”
“I am going to take you pillion, Betty; and you must clasp your warm hands over my heart and keep it beating for you. That is your charge.”
He hurriedly withdrew her and urged her up the road. A little distance off they came upon the two men with the horses. Tuke sprang to his saddle, gave the girl a hand, and pulled her to a seat behind him.
“God bless your honour!” cried poor Jim.
“What of you, my good fellow?”
“What but the Union, master?”