“Oh, master, but her dress is black, and wouldn’t show it plain.”
Alexander knew this to be true, and he also knew that some wounds bleed only inwardly. So he began to examine her body. First he unloosed her beautiful hair, and ran his fingers through its tresses, and felt all over her head. But apparently she had received no sort of injury there.
While he was proceeding with this inspection, Pina suddenly started up and ran out of the room.
He made a most careful examination, but found no mark of violence upon her person.
And yet he thought she must have come to her death suddenly and violently; since she had been alive and in her usual health between ten and eleven o’clock on the preceding evening, and now was dead, and apparently had been so for several hours.
He had scarcely finished his examination, when Pina rushed back into the room, holding a fragment of looking-glass in her hand, and exclaiming eagerly:
“Try this! Oh, dear master, try this! Lay it to her lips and hold it there a minute or so, and if there’s any moisture on it, it is a sign that there’s a little life left, and where there’s life, you know, if there’s ever so little, there’s hope.”
Mr. Lyon silently took the piece of glass, and laid it flat with the bright side to the cold lips, and stood watching the result.
“Oh, sir, I’m glad I happened to think of it! I know’d a woman, I did, who fell down into a fit, and lay for dead all day long; for her breath had stopped, and her heart had stopped, and she was cold and stiff; and they were going to lay her out, when somebody said ‘try a glass,’ and so they tried it, and sure enough, after they held it over her lips a little while, there was a moisture on it, and so they knew she still breathed ever so little, though they couldn’t perceive it in any other way but by the glass—and so—”
“Hush, stop,” said Mr. Lyon, interrupting the garrulous girl, and examining the glass.