At that moment a cry reached his ears—absorbed in his own reflections, he had looked neither to the right nor to the left—but at the sound of a human voice, he lifted up his eyes and beheld on the opposite side of the bridge the figure of a woman exactly in the very act he had himself contemplated a moment before—she too had been for an instant arrested by the cry, and in that interval he rushed across the road and caught her by the dress.
He had scarcely lifted her to the ground, when a gentleman, out of breath with haste, came running towards him from the further extremity of the bridge—"Thank God!" cried he, as soon as he perceived the group—"when I lost sight of her, I didn't know which side she'd gone down—I was afraid she was in the water—child and all!"
"I was but just in time," said Mr. Wetherall—"another moment and she'd have been gone."
"And I should never have forgiven myself," said Mr. Simpson, that I hadn't stayed to relieve her the first time I passed."
During these brief words they were both supporting the unfortunate woman, who either from weakness or agitation, appeared unable
