"I couldn't stay for the shame," was the nearly inaudible answer: and but that our ears were good ones, we should not have caught it. If we would but fetch her a drop of water for the love of Christ, she said, as we got up. It was impossible to help wondering whether God had not allowed Robert Ashton to be lost on purpose to bring us round there. But for our passing, both she and the baby must very soon have died, for the shed was quite out of the reach of any road likely to be traversed. We must have seemed to her like angels of mercy. Perhaps we were made use of as such that night. "Have you lain here all that time--two nights and days--without food?" asked Tod, in his softest voice. "Without food, sir, and without drink. Oh, for a drop of water! If you could only bring it me, I should die easier." We got some clean snow and moistened her lips with it. She gave a sobbing cry as it trickled down her throat: Tom Coney said it was choking, but I thought it was joy. To a poor creature in a burning fever, lying without any sort of drink for days and nights, the fresh cold snow must have tasted like dew from heaven. She motioned that the baby should have some, but we were afraid: it looked to be dying. What could be done with her? To carry her away was not practicable--and she seemed too ill besides. Tom Coney offered to cover up the baby under his coat and take it to the Court for food and shelter; but she clutched it closer to her side as it lay on her arm, and faintly said it couldn't do without her. Shutting the shed door again, we got quickly to Timberdale Court, found Robert Ashton was not at home, as you heard, and asked for the housekeeper, Mrs. Broom. She was sitting in her little carpeted room, off the big kitchen, with one of the maids. They were sewing white bows on a lot of caps, and wondering what had become of the master. To be burst in upon by us, all three telling the story at once of the woman and child, pretty nearly scared good old Mother Broom's senses away. "You are just playing a trick upon me, young gentlemen." "It is as true as that we are here, Mrs. Broom; it is true as gospel. They'll both be dead if something's not done for them." "Well, I never heard of such a thing," she exclaimed, beginning to stir about. "Lying in that cow-shed for two days without help! You ought to have brought the poor baby away with you, sirs." "She wouldn't let it come." "I wouldn't have minded her saying that. A fortnight-old baby lying in the shed in this cold!" "I don't think it will make much difference in the long-run, whether the baby stays in the shed or comes out of it," said Tom Coney. "If it sees to-morrow's dawn, I shall wonder." "Well, this _is_ a fine start!" cried Mother Broom. "And the master never to have come home--that's another," she went on. For, what to do, she didn't know the least in the world, and was like a woman with a lost head.