in those
words. He seemed to take them in, at every gasp he drew. They were
everywhere, and not to be escaped. And still she hurried on; the same
light in her eyes.

All at once she stopped.

"Now, turn her back!" exclaimed the old man, tearing his white hair. "My
child! Meg! Turn her back! Great Father, turn her back!"

In her own scanty shawl, she wrapped the baby warm. With her fevered
hands, she smoothed its limbs, composed its face, arranged its mean
attire. In her wasted arms she folded it, as though she never would
resign it more. And with her dry lips, kissed it in a final pang, and
last long agony of Love.

Putting its tiny hand up to her neck, and holding it there, within her
dress, next to her distracted heart, she set its sleeping face against
her: closely, steadily against her: and sped onward to the river.

To the rolling River, swift and dim, where Winter Night sat brooding
like the last dark thoughts of many who had sought a refuge there before
her. Where scattered lights upon the banks gleamed sullen, red and dull,
as torches that were burning there to show the way to Death. Where no
abode of living people cast its shadow, on the deep, impenetrable,
melancholy shade.

To the River! To that portal of Eternity, her desperate footsteps tended
with the swiftness of its rapid waters running to the sea. He tried to
touch her as she passed him, going down to its dark level; but, the wild
distempered form, the fierce and terrible love, the desperation that had
left all human check or hold behind, swept by him like the wind.

He followed her. She paused a moment on the brink, before the dreadful
plunge. He fell down on his knees, and in a shriek addressed the figures
in the Bells now hovering above them.

"Have mercy on her!" he exclaimed, "as one in whom this dreadful crime
has sprung from Love perverted; from the strongest, deepest Love we
fallen creatures know! Think what her misery must have been, when such
seed bears such fruit. Heaven meant her to be good. There is no loving
mother on the earth who might not come to this, if such a life had gone
before. Oh, have mercy on my child, who, even at this pass, means mercy
to her own, and dies herself, and perils her immortal soul, to save
it!"

She was in his arms. He held her now. His strength was like a giant's.

He might have said more; but the Bells, the old familiar Bells, his own
dear, constant, steady friends, the Chimes, began to ring the jo