But before Martha could move in her agony of terror, the heavy
stone dropped from her small fingers, and Nan, little Nan, with her rosy,
laughing face, had fallen after it.
Martha never forgot that moment. As if with a sudden awaking of memory,
there flashed across her mind all the child's simple, winning ways. She
seemed to see her dying mother again, laying the helpless baby in her
arms, and bidding her to be a mother to it. She heard her father's last
charge to take care of little Nan, when he also was passing away. Her own
wicked carelessness and neglect, Stephen's terrible sorrow if little Nan
should be dead, all the woeful consequences of her fault, were stamped
upon her heart with a sudden and very bitter stroke. Those who were
watching her from the lane saw her stand as if transfixed for a moment;
and then a piercing scream, which made every one within hearing start
with terror, rang through the frosty air, as Martha sprang forward to the
mouth of the old pit, and, peering down its dark and narrow depths, could
just discern a little white figure lying motionless at the bottom of the
shaft.
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