“Elsie, who has done this?” he asked in passionate grief.
“Father, help me to disentangle her; to lift her down,” now said May, with streaming eyes. “Oh! help us, Mr. Temple!”
“Yes,” answered John Temple, “I will climb the tree and disentangle her dress. You help to hold her head and body, Mr. Churchill, while I go up.”
He was slight and active, and soon the poor still form was loose from the branch which had caught and held it in its fall. They laid her gently on the grass. May Churchill knelt down and covered the ghastly face and the blue-edged wound on the shapely throat, and she tried also to draw away the landlord from his dead daughter’s side.
“Oh, come away, come away, Mr. Wray,” she said, pitifully; “this is no place for you—I will stay with her—you go with father.”
But the unhappy man took no heed of her words. He knelt there holding one of Elsie’s cold hands; his eyes were staring from his head with sorrow.
“Who killed thee, my lass?” he asked again and again; “thee who had wronged none.”
“It may have been an accident,” suggested May, tearfully and soothingly.
But at this moment the doctor and some others arrived on the spot, and the doctor at once knelt down and removed the handkerchief from the face and throat.