"World if you know what is right,
Take me in his stead,
Bury me deep out of sight,
I am the one that's dead."
THEY took Marie back to the Yellow Sheaf Inn, on the Oxford road, carrying her on a rough stretcher made of a broken gate, covered with coats, and Chris walked beside her, holding her hand in his.
A doctor had come from Somerton, and they took her away from him upstairs, and shut the door.
The woman who kept the inn came up to him as he stood on the landing outside her room and tried to persuade him to come away and change his wet clothes.
"You'll take your death of cold," she said in kindly anger. "There's a suit of my husband's that you're welcome to, sir, I'm sure."
Chris thanked her absently, but hardly heard what she was saying. In his heart he was sure that Marie was dead, though as yet the shock of the tragedy kept him from feeling anything acutely.
It was a nightmare as yet—that was all! And he had the childish feeling that if he were patient, he would wake up and be able to laugh at it all.