"Haste ye! haste ye, Jenny!" he added; "it's as true as that my name is Peter Thornton."
She arose, and, with her household servants, accompanied him to where the dead body lay.
"Now," added Peter, with a look which bespoke the troubled state of his feelings, "this will be a job for the crowner, and we'll a' have to be examined and cross-examined, backward and forward, just as if we had killed the woman, or had onything to do wi' her death. I would rather have lost five hundred pounds, than that she had been found dead upon my stackyard."
"But see," said Jenny, after she had ascertained that the mother was really dead, and as she took up the child in her arms, and kissed it—"see what a sweet, bonny, innocent-looking creature this is! And, poor thing, only to think that it should be left an orphan, and apparently in a foreign land, for I dinna understand a word that it greets and says!"
A coroner's inquest was accordingly held upon the body, and a verdict of "Found dead" returned. Nothing was discovered about the person of the deceased which could throw light upon who she was. All the money she had had with her consisted of a small Spanish coin; but on her hand she wore a gemmed ring, of curious workmanship and considerable value, and also a plain marriage-ring. On the inside of the former were engraven the characters of C. F. et M. V.; and within the latter, C. et M. F. The fashion of her dress was Spanish, and the few words of lamentation which her poor child could imperfectly utter were discovered to be in that language. There being small likelihood of discovering who the stranger had been, her orphan boy was about to be committed to the workhouse; but Mrs Thornton had no children of her own, the motherless little one had been three days under her care, and already her heart began to feel for him a mother's fondness.
"Peter," said she unto her husband, "I am not happy at the thought o' this poor bairn being sent to the workhouse. I'm sure he was born above such a condition. Death, in taking his mother, left him helpless and crying for help at our door, and I think it would be unnatural in us to withhold it. Now, as we have nae family o' our own, if ye'll bear the expense, I'm sure I'm willing to tak the trouble, o' bringing him up."
"Wi' a' my heart, Jenny, my dow," said Peter; "it was me that found the bairn, and if ye say, keep it, I say, keep it, too. His meat will never be missed; and it will be a worse year wi' us than ony we hae seen, when we canna get claes to his back."
"Peter," replied she, "I always said ye had a good heart; and by this action ye prove it to the world."
"I care not that," said he, snapping the nail of his thumb upwards from his forefinger, "what the world may say or think about me, provided you and my conscience say that it is right that I hae done."
They therefore, from that hour, took the orphan as the child of their adoption; and they were most puzzled to decide by what name he should be called.