Above, the stars were coming out one by one, and the wide stretch of low meadow-land and water lay in the purple haze of gathering shadows like an unknown and undiscovered country, till it was lost in the overarching canopy of the dim far-off heavens.
Mary Gifford felt strangely indifferent to all outward things as she sat with her hands tightly clasped together under her cloak, and in her heart only one thought had room—that she was in a few short hours to clasp her boy in her arms.
So over-mastering was this love and hungry yearning of the mother for her child, that his condition—stricken by fever, and that of his father lying at the very gates of death—were almost forgotten.
'If only he knows my arms are round him,' she thought; 'if only I can hear his voice call me mother, I will die with him content.'
After a few hours, when there were lines of dawn in the eastern sky, Mary felt the barge was being moored to the river bank; and her guide, rising from his seat, came towards her, gave her his hand and said,—
'We have now to go on foot for some distance, to the place where your son lies. Are you able for this?'
For Mary was stiff and cramped with her position in the barge for so long a time, and she would have fallen as she stepped out, had not one of the watermen caught her, saying,—
'Steady, Madam! steady!'
After a few tottering steps, Mary recovered herself, and said,—
'The motion of walking will be good for me; let us go forward.'