When consciousness returned she was too spent and weary to do aught but creep to her bed and lie there shivering with the chill of the cool April night, and sobbing like a weary child that weeps all its tears dry ere it falls asleep.
Everything was very quiet; not a sound broke the stillness but the loud voice of Mr. Groves’ big Newfoundland, Link—short for Lincoln—as he bayed at the moon, now low, now loud, but always in direst anguish, as if convinced in the canine mind that some disaster was happening to the ones he loved best, his old master and little Eva.
He knew that the exile had returned, for he had had a most affectionate meeting with her outdoors when she came.
Though he howled and yelped most dismally under her window, he could not coax her out again, but he heard her voice in those prolonged shrieks that assured him she was in trouble.
So, even when all grew still, Link could not rest, but wandered round and round the house, occasionally hurling his huge form against the kitchen door in a vain attempt to force an entrance. Then he would sit down on his haunches and dolorously bay at the moon again.
But despite these mournful sounds of honest canine woe, and despite her own woes, the weary girl at last slept deep and dreamlessly, losing for a while the bitter realization of her griefs.
When she awoke at last the sun rode high in the heavens, and for a moment, as it shone in her face, she forgot her sorrows, and seemed to be again the happy little Eva that used to spring up so eagerly to draw back the curtains to look for the offering of love that so often lay there mutely appealing to her in the name of the giver.
But the white ruffled curtain had been taken away now, and as the midday sun glared on the bare floor that was streaked and stained with dark spots that would not “out,” she gasped and remembered all.
The white matting had been removed, but the blood had soaked through it, and remained to bear terrible witness against the two who had done each other to death that fatal night.
Springing from the bed, she softly tried the door again, but it was still tightly closed, and she wondered if her heartless cousins had forgotten her existence, or intended to starve her to death.