And Captain Pendleton continued his seeming efforts to restore consciousness to the prostrate form before him, until he heard the galloping of the horse that took the messenger away for the doctor, and felt sure that the man could not now receive orders to fetch the coroner also.
Then Captain Pendleton arose and beckoned Miss Tabby Winterose to come towards him. That lady came forward, whimpering as usual, but with an immeasurably greater cause than she had ever possessed before.
“Close her eyes, straighten her limbs, arrange her dress. She is quite dead,” said the Captain.
Miss Tabby’s voice was lifted up in weeping.
But wilder yet arose the sound of wailing, as the Scotch girl, with the child in her arms, broke through the crowd and cast herself down beside her dead mistress, crying:
“Oh! and is it gone ye are, my bonny leddy? Dead and gone fra us, a’ sae suddenly! Oh, bairnie! look down on your puir mither, wham they have murthered—the born deevils.”
The poor child, frightened as much by the wild wailing of the nurse as by the sight of his mother’s ghastly form, began to scream and to hide his head on Janet’s bosom.
“Woman, this is barbarous. Take the boy away from this sight,” exclaimed Captain Pendleton, imperatively.
But Janet kept her ground, and continued to weep and wail and apostrophize the dead mother, or appeal to the orphan child. And all the women in the crowd whose tongues had hitherto been paralyzed with horror, now broke forth in tears and sobs, and cries of sympathy and compassion, and—
“Oh, poor murdered young mother! Oh, poor orphaned babe!” or lamentations to the same effect, broke forth on all sides.