‘Lizzie!’ exclaimed Mrs Barnes. ‘Look up now; I’ve come to comfort thee! Let us thank Heaven that he’s found again, and the evil words they spoke of him must be took back.’
But the blind girl neither spoke nor stirred.
‘Can’t thee answer, my lass?’ said Isaac the poacher, as he shook her by the arm.
The answer that she made was by falling backwards and disclosing her fair, gentle face—white and rigid as her lover’s.
‘Merciful God! she is dead!’ they cried.
Yes, they were right. She was dead—she was at rest. What she had waited for she had found. What she had striven for she had gained. How many of us can say the same? Larry had been restored to her. The shifting quicksand had thrown him upon earth again, and had she not been there, his body might have been washed out to sea, and no further knowledge gained of his fate. But she had saved his dust for consecrated ground—more, she had saved his character for the healing of his mother’s heart. For in his breast there still reposed the bunch of samphire he had perilled his life to gather for the farmer’s daughter, and, grasped tight in his hand, they found the neckcloth of Lord Worcester’s gamekeeper—a crimson, silk neckcloth, recognised by all three—and which Larry had seized and held in the last deadly struggle. And the men of Corston looked on it and knew the truth—that their comrade was no murderer, but had fallen where he was found in a quarrel (probably pre-arranged) with Frederick Darley; and they cursed the gamekeeper in their hearts.
But Lizzie was at rest—happy Lizzie Locke! sleeping in the quiet churchyard at Corston, with her cheek pillowed on her Larry’s breast.
THE END.
[1] This is a fact, the corpse of a fisherman having been preserved in like manner for some nine months when buried in the salt marshes of Norfolk.