Almost before she had recovered her senses, Winefred found herself in a cottage, warm, where a good fire burnt, throwing out waves of yellow light as well as grateful heat, and she was being undressed by her mother and put to bed. She was stupefied, exhausted by her struggle for life.
The thoughts in her head were as straws, leaves, feathers in a swirl of water. She knew not whether what she experienced was a phase of dream or a piece of reality. But when food was forced upon her, and a mug of hot elderberry wine put to her lips, she drew a long breath, rubbed her eyes that were brimming with tears, rain, and sweat, looked about her and asked, 'Mother, where am I?'
'With me,' answered Jane Marley.
'Where are we both?'
'Captain Job Rattenbury has taken us in,' said the woman. 'Enough for you to know at present. Go to sleep and dream away the past.'
'O mother, did you really intend to throw me over the cliff?'
'Winefred, I would have cast myself over with you in my arms. But that is gonebyes. Forget and sleep.'
But none can undergo great excitement of brain, tension of nerve, pass through peril of life, and sleep sweetly after it. The brain continues to start, the nerve to quiver, the horror to come back, perhaps in receding waves, yet with imperceptible decline of force. If the girl fell into a doze it was to again spring up and cry out, under the supposition that she was falling, or to battle with hands and feet, as though wrestling once more to preserve life.
The room in which she had been put to bed was on the ground floor. There was a doorway from it communicating with the front kitchen.