'
Making a kind of cradle, by clasping their hands crosswise under
the inanimate woman, they lifted her, and walked on side by side
down a path indicated by the stranger, who appeared to know the
locality well.
'I had been sitting in the church for nearly an hour,' Knight
resumed, when they were out of the churchyard. 'Afterwards I
walked round to the site of the fallen tower, and so found her.
It is painful to think I unconsciously wasted so much time in the
very presence of a perishing, flying soul.'
'The tower fell at dusk, did it not? quite two hours ago, I
think?'
'Yes. She must have been there alone. What could have been her
object in visiting the churchyard then?
'It is difficult to say.' The stranger looked inquiringly into the
reclining face of the motionless form they bore. 'Would you turn
her round for a moment, so that the light shines on her face?' he
said.
They turned her face to the moon, and the man looked closer into
her features. 'Why, I know her!' he exclaimed.
'Who is she?'
'Mrs. Jethway. And the cottage we are taking her to is her own.
She is a widow; and I was speaking to her only this afternoon. I
was at Castle Boterel post-office, and she came there to post a
letter. Poor soul! Let us hurry on.'
'Hold my wrist a little tighter. Was not that tomb we laid her on
the tomb of her only son?'
'Yes, it was. Yes, I see it now. She was there to visit the
tomb.
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