“It seemed fifteen minutes, it was only one, while the mother hung over the edge of the black seething whirlpool, and then he came up, bleeding from a wound in the forehead, without Elsie.”
“I take you to witness,” declared Elijah solemnly, “that I said he was a brave man. Yes, he had the natural virtues, and some who make a profession have none.”
“For a few seconds he hung on to the edge to get breath, and Mrs. Macfadyen herself besought him not to risk his life, for he was a husband and father; but he only answered: 'I'll hae Elsie oot'.”
“They forgot themselves,—do you mark that?—both of them,” cried Elijah. “Whose Spirit was that? Didn't they keep the commandment of Love, which is the chief commandment? and—answer me—can any one keep that commandment without grace?”
It was not with me but with himself the evangelist was arguing, and I went on:
“He came up again, this time with Elsie in one arm, a poor, little limp bundle of clothes, her yellow hair spread over her face, and her eyes closed, I was afraid, for ever.”
“But she lived, didn't she?” There was no Elijah Higginbotham anywhere to be found now, only an excited man, concerned about the saving of a little maid. “Excuse me, I didn't read that part about the saving so carefully as I ought I was more concerned about... the judgment.”
“Yes, Elsie was all right in a day or two, but Posty had not strength to do more than hand her to her mother, and then, exhausted by the struggle with the water, he fell back, and was dead when he was found.”
“What were you doing that you did not lay hold of Posty and pull him out?” thundered Elijah; “you seem to have been there.”
“Only in a literary sense,” I hastened to explain, for it now seemed likely that the evangelist having come to condemn Posty, was about to take up the cudgels on his behalf.