Page:Gaskell--A dark night's work.djvu/105

94 and looked with an intensity of eagerness almost amounting to faintness on the experiment, and yet he could not hope. The flame was steady—steady and pitilessly unstirred, even when it was adjusted close to mouth and nostril; the head was raised up by one of Dixon’s stalwart arms, while he held the candle in the other hand. Ellinor fancied that there was some trembling on Dixon’s part, and grasped his wrist tightly in order to give it the requisite motionless firmness.

All in vain. The head was placed again on the cushions, the servant rose and stood by his master, looked sadly on the dead man, whom, living, none of them had liked or cared for, and Ellinor sat on, quiet and tearless, as one in a trance.

“How was it, father?” at length she asked.

He would fain have had her ignorant of all, but so questioned by her lips, so adjured by her eyes in the very presence of death, he could not choose but speak the truth; he spoke it in convulsive gasps, each sentence an effort:

“He taunted me—he was insolent, beyond my patience—I could not bear it. I struck him—I can’t tell how it was. He must have hit his head in falling. Oh, my God! one little hour a go I was innocent of this man’s blood!” He covered his face with his hands.