“No use; all’s over――she’s gone!” said Dr. Pinfold, after pressing his fingers on her wrist to feel the pulse which no longer beat. He saw that the woman was dead. “Nothing remains to be done but to carry off the body for burial.”
“So soon!” exclaimed Io in a tone of expostulation. “Is it not possible that life may linger?”
“Life is quite extinct,” said the doctor.
“She is deceased――annihilated――I told you so,” joined in Thud.
“We bury quickly in these latitudes,” observed Dr. Pinfold; “and it would not be well to keep a corpse in the house to which Coldstream has just brought his bride.”
“See, the veranda is desecrated by blood-stains,” said Thud, “and so is Io’s apparel.”
“Go and change it, my love,” cried Oscar with a look of pain almost amounting to horror.
“A few minutes――just let me stay a few minutes to try to comfort this poor child,” said Io. “Let me try to find out from her whether she has a father, brother, any protector, or whether she is alone in this wide, wide world.” Putting her arm round the sobbing girl, Io spoke to her in tender tones and in her own language, to the great surprise of Dr. Pinfold. Io’s words were evidently understood; for while preparations were being made for the removal of the corpse, Io drew from the young Karen the fact that she had no father, no relation――that to her that dead mother had indeed been all in all. The girl clung to the body with wild tenacity, heedless of all that the chaplain, doctor, or Oscar could say; yet, with a kind of instinctive obedience, loosened her hold when Io laid her white hand on the brown one. Then the child fell weeping at the feet of the lady, and kissed the hem of her blood-stained robe.
“O Oscar dearest, if we can find no relation, will you not let me adopt this poor child?” said Mrs. Coldstream, her bright eyes dewy with tears.
“Do whatever your kind heart prompts you to do,” was her husband’s reply. “Your will is law here. The girl shall be brought up as your little attendant.”
Io persuaded the young Karen to follow her to her own apartment, and Oscar and Mr. Lawrence made arrangements for the removal of the body on the _charpai_. The two Englishmen needed no introduction to each other, meeting, as they did, under such solemn circumstances beside the form of the dead. Mark Lawrence had been prepared to like Mr. Coldstream; and now Oscar’s brave though fruitless attempt to save a poor native, and the fact that he had himself carried her lifeless body, roused a feeling of admiration in the heart of the lonely pastor which seemed certain to warm into friendship. Mark thought that he had at last found one to share his interests and cares, some one whose sympathy would lighten his burdens. He looked at the high pale brow and the fine features of Coldstream, and felt that he had never met with so interesting a man. Oscar’s gentle courtesy to his wife had not escaped the chaplain’s notice; and Mark silently thanked God for having sent to Moulmein a pair whose friendship might, even to a disappointed man like himself, make life a less sad and weary thing.