best thing for you to do is to bide here with your load, I’ll send somebody to help you as soon as I can. It will soon be daylight, and you have nothing to fear.’
He mounted and sped on his way; while Tess stood and waited. The atmosphere turned pale, the birds shook themselves in the hedges, arose, and twittered; the lane showed all its white features, and Tess showed hers, still whiter. The huge pool of blood in front of her was already assuming the iridescence of coagulation; and when the sun rose a million prismatic hues were reflected from it. Prince lay alongside still and stark; his eyes half open, the hole in his chest looking scarcely large enough to have let out all that had animated him.
‘’Tis all my doing—all mine!’ the distracted girl cried, gazing intently at the spectacle. ‘No excuse for me—none. What will father and mother live on now? Aby, Aby!’ She shook the child, who had slept soundly through the whole disaster. ‘We can’t go on with our load—Prince is killed!’
When Abraham realized all, the furrows of fifty years were extemporized on his young face.
57
