“I mun hurry on before,” she said. “I mun go and say a word to Liz. Comin' aw at onct th' soight ud fear her.”
Reaching the house, she pushed the door open and went in. Everything was so quiet that she fancied the girl must have gone to bed.
“Liz,” she said aloud. “Liz!”
Her voice fell with an echoing sound upon the silent room. She looked at the bed and saw the child lying there asleep. Liz was not with it. She passed quickly into the room adjoining and glanced around. It was empty. Moved by some impulse she went back to the bed, and in bending over the child, saw a slip of paper pinned upon its breast, and upon this paper Joan read, in the sprawling, uncertain hand she knew so well:
“Dunnot be hard on me, Joan, dunnot—Good-bye!”
When Derrick entered the door, he found Joan standing alone in the centre of the room, holding the scrap of paper in her hand.
CHAPTER XXXI - The Last Blow
“He won't live,” the doctor said to Derrick. “He's not the man to get over such injuries, powerful as he looks. He has been a reckless, drunken brute, and what with the shock and reaction nothing will save him. The clumsy rascals who attacked him meant to do him harm enough, but they have done him more than they intended, or at least the man's antecedents will help them to a result they may not have aimed at. We may as well tell the girl, I suppose—fine creature, that girl, by the way. She won't have any sentimental regrets. It's a good riddance for her, to judge from what I know of them.”
“I will tell her,” said Derrick.