Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/431

 garments, and from these the forms of the two youngest children were suspended by a piece of box-cord round each of their necks, while from a nail a few yards off the body of little Jude was hanging in a similar manner. An overturned chair was near the elder boy, and his glazed eyes were staring into the room; but those of the girl and the baby boy were closed.

Half paralyzed by the grotesque and hideous horror of the scene, he let Sue lie, cut the cords with his pocketknife, and threw the three children on the bed; but the feel of their bodies in the momentary handling seemed to say that they were dead. He caught up Sue, who was in fainting-fits, and put her on the bed in the other room, after which he breathlessly summoned the landlady and ran out for a doctor.

When he got back Sue had come to herself, and the two helpless women, bending over the children in wild efforts to restore them, and the triplet of little corpses, formed a scene which overthrew his self-command. The nearest surgeon came in, but, as Jude had inferred, his presence was superfluous. The children were past saving; for though their bodies were still barely cold, it was conjectured that they had been hanging more than an hour. The probability held by the parents later on, when they were able to reason on the case, was that the elder boy, on waking, looked into the outer room for Sue, and, finding her absent, was thrown into a fit of aggravated despondency that the events and information of the evening before had induced in his morbid temperament. Moreover, a piece of paper was found upon the floor, on which was written in the boy's hand, with the bit of lead-pencil that he carried:

"Done because we are too menny."

At sight of this Sue's nerves utterly gave way, an awful conviction that her discourse with the boy had been the