he is nearer nor Dr
Rider," cried the curious excited landlady, with her hand upon the
locked door.

Nettie made no answer. She took them into the room in solemn silence,
and showed them the stark and ghastly figure, for which all possibilities
had been over in the dark midnight waters hours ago. The earliest gleam
of sunshine came shining in at that moment through the window which last
night Nettie had opened that Fred might see the light in it and be guided
home. It seemed to strike like a reproach upon that quick-throbbing
impatient heart, which felt as a sin against the dead its own lack of
natural grief and affection. She went hurriedly to draw down the blinds
and close out the unwelcome light. "Now he is gone, nobody shall slight
or scorn him," said Nettie to herself, with hot tears; and she turned
the wondering dismayed couple--already awakening out of their first
horror, to think of the injury done to their house and "lodgings," and
all the notoriety of an inquest--out of the room, and locked the door
upon the unwilling owners, whom nothing but her resolute face prevented
from bursting forth in selfish but natural lamentations over their own
secondary share in so disastrous an event. Nettie sat down again, a
silent little sentinel by the closed door, without her shawl, and with
her tiny chilled feet on the cold tiles. Nettie sat silent, too much
occupied even to ascertain the causes of her personal discomfort. She
had indeed enough to think of; and while her little girlish figure,
so dainty, so light, so unlike her fortunes, remained in that unusual
stillness, her mind and heart were palpitating with thoughts--all kinds
of thoughts; not only considerations worthy the solemnity and horror of
the moment, but every kind of trivial and secondary necessity, passed
through that restless soul, all throbbing with life and action, more
self-conscious than usual from the fact of its outward stillness. A
hundred rapid conclusions and calculations about the funeral, the
mourning, the change of domestic habits involved, darted through
Nettie's mind. It was a relief to her to leap forward into these
after-matters. The immediate necessity before her--the dreadful errand
on which she must presently go to her sister's bedside--the burst of
wailing and reproachful grief which all alone Nettie would have to
encounter and subdue, were not to be thought of. She bent down her
little head into her hands, and once more shed back that