“Poor, poor Oliver,” she said, kneeling down beside him, and wringing his wet hair. “Where has he been?”
At the sound of her voice his eyes unclosed, and he whispered faintly:
“Lawrence, Milly. Lawrence is dead under that tree.”
Then, for one brief instant, Mildred fancied herself dying, but the sight of Lilian, who had just come in, brought back her benumbed faculties, and going up to her, she said:
“Did you hear, Lily? Lawrence is dead,—drowned. Let us go to him together. He is mine, now, as much as yours.”
“Oh, I carn’t, I carn’t!” sobbed Lilian, cowering back into a corner. “I’m afraid of dead folks! I’d rather stay here.”
“Fool! dough-head!” thundered the Judge, who thoroughly disliked her, and was now out of all kind of patience. “Go to the house, then, and see that his chamber is ready for the body,” and without waiting to see if his orders were obeyed, he hastened after Mildred, who was flying over the distant fields as if she sported a pair of unseen wings.
She saw the stains from Oliver’s wounded feet, and knowing that she was right she ran on, and on until she reached the spot, whither other aid had preceded her, else Lawrence Thornton had surely floated down the deep, dark river of death.
Two villagers, returning from a neighboring wood, had found him lying there, and were doing for him what they could when Mildred came up begging of them to say if he were dead.
“Speak to him, Miss Howell,” said one of the men. “That may bring him back—it sometimes does;” but Mildred’s voice, though all powerful to unlock Oliver’s scattered senses, could not penetrate the lethargy which had stolen over Lawrence, and, with an ominous shake of their heads, the two men lifted him between them, and bore him back to the house, where Lilian, in her own room, was sobbing as if her heart would break, and saying to Rachel’s grandchild, who had toddled in and asked what was the matter: