Robin answered her by a look. His heart beat thickly,—an awful fear beset him, paralysing his energies. Was Innocent dead? Was that pitiful wail the voice of her departed spirit crying at the door of her childhood's home?
"Priscilla! … Oh, Priscilla!"
The old woman straightened her bent figure and lifted her head.
"Mister Robin, I must answer that call!" she said—"Storm or rain, we've no right to sit here with the child's voice crying and the old house shut and barred against her! We must open the door!"
He could not speak—but he obeyed her gesture, and went quickly out of the kitchen into the adjacent hall,—there he unbarred and unlocked the massive old entrance door and threw it open. A sheet of rain flung itself in his face, and the wind was so furious that for a moment he could scarcely stand. Then, recovering himself, he peered into the darkness and could see nothing,—till all at once he became vaguely aware of a small dark object crouching in one corner of the deep porch like a frightened animal or a lost child. He stooped and touched it—it was wet and clammy—he grasped it more firmly, and it moved under his hand shudderingly and lifted itself, turning a white face up to the light that streamed out from the hall—a face wan and death-like, but still the face he had ever thought the sweetest in the world—the face of Innocent! With a loud cry of mingled terror and rapture, he caught her up and held her to his heart.
"Innocent!—My little love!—Innocent!"
She made no answer—no sort of resistance. Her little body hung heavily in his arms—her head drooped helplessly against his shoulder.
"Priscilla!" he called—"Priscilla!"
Priscilla was already beside him—she had hurried into the hall directly she heard his exclamation of fear and amazement, and now as she saw him carrying the forlorn little burden tenderly along she threw up her hands with a piteous, almost despairing gesture.
"God save us all!—It's the child herself!" she exclaimed—"Mercy on the poor lamb!—what can have happened to her?—she's half drowned with rain!"