“Let me go to my bairn,” she cried, struggling.
“We’ll bring your bairn,” he said, motioning to the two nurses to hold her back, while he tore up the bank.
The brushes grew thick there, and the baby had been caught underneath in such a way that it could not be seen from the steep bank. Excepting that the children had known where it had stopped, it would have been much longer before it was found.
The man on the bank plunged down through the bushes and both men were lost to view.
Five minutes of breathless waiting passed, while even the poor mother only moaned brokenly, and then they reappeared, one of them bearing the little drowned baby.
“Run for your pa, children,” cried Eliza, but Cricket’s swift feet were already flying along to the house.
The group stood in awed silence as the bearer tenderly deposited the dripping little burden on the grass. It looked as if it were asleep. The golden curls clung to its white forehead, and the little face was still rosy.
The poor mother cast herself down beside it in a perfect abandonment of grief, kissing its lips, and clasping the lifeless little form to her breast, as she cried, ceaselessly,—
“Oh, my bairn! my bairn!”
Running at full speed down the lane came Dr. Ward, with blankets, and close behind him followed his wife, with a whiskey-flask. In a moment he was among them, and had caught the child from the mother. He tore off its clothes and put his ear to its heart.