'Oh, Jim,' says I, 'wherever have you been?
You'll be the death o' me and them poor children!' 'You go to bed,' says he to me, 'and I'll come presently.' But I could see him, 'cos of the moon, almost as plain as day, an' I couldn't take my eyes off him.

And he went about the kitchen so strange like, puttin' down his hat and takin' it up again, an' I saw he hadn't got his gun.

So I went up and caught holt on him.
An' he gave me a push back.

'Can't you let me alone ?' he says; 'you'll know soon enough.' An' then I looked at my sleeve where I'd touched him--oh, my God! my God!" Marcella, white to the lips and shuddering too, held her tight.

She had the _seeing_ faculty which goes with such quick, nervous natures, and she saw the scene as though she had been there--the moonlit cottage, the miserable husband and wife, the life-blood on the woman's sleeve.
Mrs.Hurd went on in a torrent of half-finished sentences and fragments of remembered talk.