Seth shrugged his shoulders. “Only a letter. ’Tain’t no use to me; if it ’ud been his hankercher, now!” With a contemptuous grimace he tore it in half, and was about to fling it away, when he stopped his hand. “I dunno,” he muttered, “perhaps I’d better keep it; he might give me something for it. I’ll offer it him anyhow.” And he thrust it carelessly into his trousers-pocket.
CHAPTER XXXI.
“WE SHALL SAVE HIM YET.”
Bessie took the note up to Olivia’s room, and found her still kneeling beside the bed, her arms stretched out upon the white coverlid in utter exhaustion; and yet the hands were moving to and fro restlessly, as if the brain were racked by anxious thought.
Bessie bent over her and softly drew the long hair from her face, which was burning hot.
“Ah, miss, you will be ill again!” she said, reproachfully. “And he said I was to take care of you.”
“Yes! It is always of me or some one else he is thinking!” Olivia moaned, impatiently. “Always of some one else—never of himself. Oh, Bessie, what shall I do to save him? What shall I do? Every hour, every minute, that slips by so stealthily and swiftly, adds to the danger. I can’t think; I can’t even pray. What shall I do?” and she wrung her hands.
“Hush, hush, miss!” murmured Bessie, soothingly. “Something will be done; the truth must come to light.”
But though she tried to speak confidently, her voice trembled, and she had to turn her face away.
“Yes, the truth will come to light when it is too late and they have—killed him. Oh, if there was only some one I could go to, some one to help me! If I were only a man instead of a weak, feeble woman! What is that?” she broke off sharply, as she caught sight of the note in Bessie’s hand.
Bessie held it out reluctantly.