And the heart beats faintly still in Harry’s breast, and the blood oozes slowly from the cut upon his brow. She feels it warm upon her hands--this is how she knows it to be blood--as she lifts his death-like face upon her knee; and still as her hand presses upon his heart, and she bends her cheek to his lips to feel if he still breathes, Martha calls upon the name of the Lord. The name--she can say nothing but the name--but in it is all prayer. And now she lifts him up into her own arms, up to the fierce heart which has throbbed with passionate love for him all his life. Mysie humbly and with terror asks to help her; but Martha, rising from her knee with all her burden in her arms, thrusts away unconsciously the trembling aid, and places him--her boy, her son, poor Harry!--in the carriage like a child. Then through the gloom which no longer needs a light, through the horror of darkness which lies over them like a cloak of iron, pressing down upon their very hearts and hiding the face upon which Martha’s eyes are fixed continually, though she can only _feel_ it where it lies upon her knee--through this night of solemn gloom and terror, which is the end--home! And now, Harry’s horse neighs and craves admittance at his stable-door; and John, roused out of the sleep from which Mysie had promised to wake him on his master’s return, starts up terrified, and cannot find his lantern nor the key which Martha’s trembling helper has left in the stable-door; and Rose and Agnes rush together, in terror which has no voice, to seek Martha in her room, and finding her gone, flee out into the impenetrable darkness and call to John for the lamps he cannot find, and carry uncovered candles--which, in the damp air, will not burn--to the gate, with a terrible apprehension of stumbling over Harry in their path; but, still, accident--any but the slightest--does not cross their distracted minds, and they never once think of death! Yet anguish and terrible dread come upon them as they struggle on along the dark way, groping for they know not what, while the darkness blinds their eyes, and chokes their very breath. But far on--far along the road, where there is a little eminence, half a mile away, appears a faint, slowly moving light. Instinctively drawing closer together, they stand, and listen, and watch this speck in the intense gloom. And Agnes does not know that her incoherent prayers are said aloud; nor does Rose, though she remembers words of them after, like the broken words of a dream.