Her voice sank to a sobbing sigh, but the prayer seemed to have stayed the fever of her brain. The white terror left her face; she even smiled to feel the pain deadening, though with the deadening came a chill that froze the warm life-blood in her veins. Her satisfaction was but momentary. She staggered to her feet. Was this, then, the death she had craved? And with a pang she recognized her folly, she would fain have recalled her prayer; for life, sweet life, is precious, even to the wretched, when they are called upon to face the dark reality we call death. Life cannot be utterly reft of hope. To the most forlorn it holds out a future, and what is this future but the possibility of better things to come? The time might yet come when Margaret would be able to look for another and more certain future—a future to which death is but the prelude. That time had not yet arrived. Her treasures, though swept from her grasp by the hand of a wayward fate, were still in the warm lap of earth; and warm is that lap to the heart when its withdrawal is threatened as a something not vaguely distant, but near and certain.
It took but a moment for these thoughts to flash through Margaret's brain, for stealthily the chill crept over her. She made a few steps forward to gain the window, but it was too rapid for her. Gasping, she fell back heavily to the ground.
[CHAPTER IV.]
JANE'S REVENGE.
For very fear unnethës may she go,
She weeped, wailed, all a day or two,
And swooned, that it ruthe was to see.
Jane Rodgers had discussed the bacon, and, as she was a tidy woman, the plate was put carefully aside for washing while she ruminated quietly over her last cup of tea—a particularly good one, black as ink, hot as an earthenware pot that had been some time on the hob could make it, rendered delicate by a few drops of rich, yellow cream, and extremely palatable by two lumps of white sugar.
Jane was not always so extravagant, but tea was her weak point. Her hard face looked almost pleasant for the moment, she was so thoroughly comfortable.
Apparently the meditations that enlivened the kindly cup were of an agreeable nature, for she smiled once or twice, and occasionally cast a glance of infinite content on the dresser, where, nestling among the bright crockery, lay a little knitted purse, from the meshes of which something closely resembling yellow gold was gleaming. A large black cat was purring by the fire; in her satisfaction Jane stooped and stroked its soft fur caressingly. But nothing in the house seemed to be stirring, and, in spite of her pleasant reflections and the abundant comfort that surrounded her, Jane began to feel, as the darkness gathered, a certain creeping sense of uneasiness. She addressed the cat, for when people feel this loneliness even a dumb creature seems a companion. "Pussy," she said, stooping again to caress it, "it's lonesome here to-night. What's she doing, I wonder, up there by herself? We'll light the candles and take them up."
As Jane spoke she rose from her seat and stretched out her hand to take the lucifer matches from the chimney-piece. But she did not draw it back so quickly. Her hand was stayed by a sudden horror. The stillness in the house was broken. There came from overhead the sound of a dull thud, as if a body had fallen heavily to the ground. The sound was followed by a silence more oppressive even than before.