ONE:At this moment of perplexity, some medicine, that she had obtained from Edith, occurred to her, and, with a feeling of confidence, and almost of extacy, she took a phial from a shelf in a cupboard where she had placed it, and, pouring out the contents in a large spoon, hesitated an instant ere she administered it. "Let me see," said she; "surely it was a large spoonful Edith told me to give��yet all that was in the phial doesn't fill the spoon. Surely I can't be wrong: no��I remember she said a large spoonful, and we didn't talk of any thing else��so I must be right." But Mary still hesitated, till, hearing a sudden noise in the court-yard, which, she conjectured, was her mistress returned, and as the child was getting worse every moment, she leaned back its head, and, forcing open its mouth, compelled the patient, though with difficulty, to swallow its death. The draught was taken; the rigid muscles relaxed, and for a minute the child lay motionless in her lap; but in an instant after, Mary could scarcely suppress a shriek at the horrid sight that met her gaze. The eyes opened, and glared, and seemed as if starting from the head��the fair face and the red lips, were blue, deepening and deepening, till settling in blackness��the limbs contracted��the mouth opened, and displayed a tongue discoloured and swollen��then came a writhing and heaving of the body, and a low, agonized moan: and, as Mary looked almost frantic at this dreadful sight, Edith's words, when she had given her the phial, "that there was enough there to kill," suddenly occurred to her��and then, too, came, with a dreadful distinctness, the remembrance of the true directions which Edith had given. TWO:Another succeeded, and met the same fate��then another, and another;��but at length, overpowered by numbers, the gallant priest was bound, and placed before one of the retainers on horseback.They clung together panting and trembling, for she was really his at last, and he was hers. Before them lay the darkness, but they would go into it hand in hand. She was his, and he was hers.THREE:Peasmarsh choir consisted of about eighteen boys and girls, with an accompaniment of cornets, flutes, and a bass viol��the last played by an immensely aged drover from Coldblow, who, having only three fingers on his left hand, had to compromise, not always tunefully, with the score. The singing was erratic. Eighteen fresh young voices could not fail to give a certain pleasure, but various members had idiosyncrasies which did not make for the common weal��such as young Ditch, who never knew till he had begun to sing whether his voice would be bass or alto, all intermediary pitches being somehow unattainable��or Rosie Hubble from Barline, who was always four bars behind the rest��or[Pg 141] even young Robert himself, who in crises of enthusiasm was wont to sing so loud that his voice drowned everyone else's, or in a wild game of follow-my-leader led the whole anthem to destruction.