Then the wave of a strange, a just passion mounted within her. She stepped into the kitchen, and, walking up to her husband's chair, she stood still a moment looking at him. The lamp was dying away, but she could still see him plainly. She held herself steadily erect; a frown was on her brow, a flame in her eyes. "Well, good-bye, Isaac," she said, in a low but firm voice. Then she walked to the back door and opened it, taking no heed of noise; the latch fell heavily, the hinges creaked. "Isaac!" she cried, her tones loud and ringing, "_Isaac!_" There was a sudden sound in the kitchen. She slipped through the door, and ran along the snow-covered garden. Isaac, roused by her call from the deep trance of exhaustion which only a few minutes before had fallen upon his misery, stood up, felt the blast rushing in through the open door at the back, and ran blindly. The door had swung to again. He clutched it open; in the dim, weird light he saw a dark figure stoop over the well; he heard something flung aside, which fell upon the snow with a thud; then the figure sprang upon the coping of the well. He ran with all his speed, his face beaten by the wind and sleet. But he was too late. A sharp cry pierced the night. As he reached the well, and hung over it, he heard, or thought he heard, a groan, a beating of the water--then no more. Isaac's shouts for help attracted the notice of a neighbour who was sitting up with her daughter and a new-born child. She roused her son-in-law and his boy, and, through them, a score of others, deep night though it was. Watson was among the first of those who gathered round the well. He and others lowered Isaac with ropes into its icy depths, and drew him up again, while the snow beat upon them all--the straining men--the two dripping shapes emerging from the earth. A murmur of horror greeted the first sight of that marred face on Isaac's arm, as the lanterns fell upon it. For there was a gash above the eye, caused by a projection in the hard chalk side of the well, which of itself spoke death. Isaac carried her in, and laid her down before the still glowing hearth. A shudder ran through him as he knelt, bending over her. The new wound had effaced all the traces of Timothy's blow. How long was it since she had stood there before him pointing to it? The features were already rigid. No one felt the smallest hope. Yet, with that futile tenderness all can show to the dead, everything was tried. Mary Anne Waller came--white and speechless--and her deft, gentle hands did whatever the village doctor told her. And there were many other women, too, who did their best. Some of them, had Bessie dared to live, would have helped with all their might to fill her cup of punishment to the brim. Now that she had thrown herself on death as her only friend, they were dissolved in pity.