There gleamed the full light of unclouded June night and unsullied faint blue June stars, but no moon aided her search.
At length she stopped and examined the ground very closely. Then she stooped lower still and thrust her hand down, passing it outside the bank until it touched the water.
She seized some object first with one hand, and then with both, and drew back from the bank softly, cautiously, as though her very life depended on the care she took. Something stretched from her hands--a line, a chain. It was fast to the bank, and reached from her hands out into the water a few feet from where she stood.
She had in her hands the chain by which the floating stage was drawn from Boland's Ait across the canal when any one wanted to go from the tow-path to the island. The chain yielded with her a little, and then would come no more. She drew upon it with all her might, but it simply rose out of the water at a slightly increased distance from the bank. She became desperate, and pulled with all her might and main. She dug her heels into the ground, and threw the whole weight of her body backward. To no avail.
She tore off her cloak and flung it on the ground that she might have greater freedom. She dragged at the chain, now pulling it from one side, now from the other. The stage did not move. Her hands were cut and bleeding.
She stooped low and got the chain over her shoulder, and flung the whole weight of her body over and over again into the loop.
The harsh ragged chain tore the skin and flesh of her soft delicate shoulder until it too bled. But the stage remained motionless.
She sank down on the ground half insensible from despair and pain.
She rose up and put the chain on the uninjured shoulder, and wrenched and tore and struggled at it, whispering to herself, "I will--I must--I tell you I must see my child once more before I die. I only want to see him asleep, through the window, any way, once. Do you hear me? I will see my child before I die. A mother has a right to see her child before she dies. Mercy, mercy, mercy! One look, only one before I go away for ever!"
She sank to the ground again. The chain slipped from her shoulder, and with a moan she spread out her torn and bleeding hands on the rugged ground and lay still.