of
the urgency, and he went, much like the boy we see at school, with a
strong hand on his collar running him in.

Madge entered, and said: 'Mr. Woodseer has seen baby and Martha and the
donkey all safe.'

'He is kind,' said Carinthia. 'Do we right to bathe the wound? It seems
right to wash it. Little things that seem right may be exactly wrong
after all, when we are ignorant. I know burning the wound is right.'

Madge asked: 'But, my lady, who is to do it?'

'You would do it, dear, if I shrank,' her mistress replied.

'Oh, my lady, I don't know, I can't say. Burning a child! And there's
our baby.'

'He has had me nearly his time.'

'Oh, my dear lady! Would the mother consent?'

'My Madge! I have so few of their words yet. You would hold the child to
save it from a dreadful end.'

'God help me, my lady--I would, as long as I live I will.... Oh! poor
infant, we do need our courage now.'

Seeing that her mistress had not a tear or a tremor, the girl blinked
and schooled her quailing heart, still under the wicked hope that the
mother would not consent; in a wonderment at this lady, who was womanly,
and who could hold the red iron at living flesh, to save the poor infant
from a dreadful end. Her flow of love to this dear lady felt the
slicing of a cut; was half revulsion, half worship; uttermost worship in
estrangement, with the further throbbing of her pulses.

The cottage door was pushed open for Lord Fleetwood and Howell Edwards,
whom his master had prepared to stand against immediate operations. A
mounted messenger had been despatched. But it was true, the doctor might
not be at home. Assuming it to be a bite of rabies, minutes lost meant
the terrible: Edwards bowed his head to that. On the other hand,
he foresaw the closest of personal reasons for hesitating to be
in agreement with the lady wholly. The countess was not so much a
persuasive lady as she was, in her breath and gaze, a sweeping and a
wafting power. After a short argument, he had the sense of hanging like
a bank detached to fatality of motion by the crack of a landslip, and
that he would speedily be on his manhood to volunteer for the terrible
work.

He addressed the mother. Her eyes whitened from their red at his first
word of laying hot iron on the child: she ran out with the wild woman's
howl to her neighbours.

'Poor mother!' Carinthia sighed. 'It may last a year in the child's
body, and one day he shudders at water. Father saw a bitte