It was nearly pitch dark, and Nathan Monypenny, standing up to his knees in the swirl of the flood, called aloud, but got no reply from any human voice. The forward hurl of the storm whooping overhead, the roar of the icy torrent fighting with the caving banks beneath, were the only sounds he could distinguish.
He was indeed on the point of leaving the water edge and regaining his comfortable cottage, when, wading through a shallow extension of the stream near the bridge, his foot struck something soft, which carried with it a curiously human suggestion. He stopped and laid his hand on the rough cloth and sodden sock which covered a man's ankle.
Though not great of stature, Nathan Monypenny was both strong and brave. He stooped and endeavoured to disentangle the boot from the iron hoop in which it was caught. Succeeding in this, he next endeavoured to pull the drowning man out of the water. But the head and upper part of the body hung over the bank, and were drawn down by the whole force of the torrent.
Again and again Nathan strove with all his might, but the water wrenched and wrestled till the body was almost snatched from his grasp. More than once, indeed, Nathan came very near going over the verge himself and sharing the fate of the unfortunate whom he was endeavouring to rescue.
At last, however, by dint of exertions almost superhuman, he succeeded in getting the man to the edge of the water, and immediately sank exhausted on the sodden grass. By-and-bye, however, he staggered up, and without ever thinking of going to seek for help, he succeeded in balancing the unconscious burden upon his shoulders and carrying it staggeringly to his own door.
The candle he had lighted was still burning, though it seemed to Nathan that he must have been a very long time away. He let the body fall upon the settle bed, and then, catching sight of the pale features, dripping ghastly under the flicker of the farthing dip, he sank dismayed on a chair.
It was Doog Carnochan—Dahlia Carnochan's husband. The story was plain enough. Stumbling homeward from the "Golden Lion," he had missed his drunken way, and wandered down by the "hooping" place to the water's edge.
Nathan stared open-mouthed. What should he do?—go for assistance? That perhaps had been wisest—yet, to leave a man in whom there might be some faint spark of life! He rose and stretched Doog's arms out over his head and back again time after time, as he had once seen a doctor do on the ice after a curling accident.
But there was no drawing of breath, nor could he distinguish the least beating of the heart. He took down the little hand-mirror, which had satisfied the frugal demands of his toilet all these years, and put it close to the drowned man's lips.
Yes—no—it could not be, yet it was just possible that there might be a faint dimming of the surface of the mirror.