He replied, and then went his way, sobered again, dreading to find himself at the cottage once more, and in the stuffy upper room with the bed and the dying woman.  Yet he was not really sad, not here at least, out in the air and the sun.  There was always a thought in his mind, a fact in his consciousness, which stood between him and sadness.  It had so stood for a long, long time.  He walked through the village to-night in spite of Eliza and his sixty years with a free bearing and a confident glance to right and left.  He knew, and the village knew, that he was not as other men.

He passed the village green with its pond, and began to climb a lane leading to the hill.  Halfway up stood two cottages sideways.  Phloxes and marigolds grew untidily about their doorways, and straggly roses, starved a little by the chalk soil, looked in at their latticed windows.  They were, however, comparatively modern and comfortable, with two bedrooms above and two living-rooms below, far superior to the older and more picturesque cottages in the main street.

John went in softly, put down his straw dinner-bag, and took off his heavy boots.  Then he opened a door in the wall of the kitchen, and gently climbed the stairs.

A girl was sitting by the bed.  When she saw his whitish head and red face emerge against the darkness of the stairhole, she put up her finger for silence.

John crept in and came to look at the patient.  His eyes grew round and staring, his colour changed.

‘Is she a-goin?’ he said, with evident excitement.

Jim’s Louisa shook her head.  She was rather a stupid girl, heavy and round-faced, but she had nursed her grandmother well.

’No, she’s asleep.  Muster Drew’s been here, and she dropped off while he was a-talkin to her.’

Mr. Drew was the Congregational minister.

‘Did she send for him?’

’Yes; she said she felt her feet a-gettin cold and I must run.  But I don’t believe she’s no worse.’

John stood looking down, ruefully.

Suddenly the figure in the bed turned.

‘John,’ said a comparatively strong voice which made Bolderfield start, ’John—­Muster Drew says you’d oughter put it in the bank.  You’ll be a fool if yer don’t, ‘ee says.’

The old woman’s pinched face emerged from the sheets, looking up at him.  Bluish patches showed here and there on the drawn white skin; there was a great change since the morning, but the eyes were still alive.

John was silent a moment, one corner of his mouth twitching, as though what she had said struck him in a humorous light.

’Well, I don’t know as I mind much what ’ee says, ‘Liza!’

‘Sit down.’

She made a movement with her emaciated hand.  John sat down on the chair Louisa gave up to him, and bent down over the bed.

’If yer woan’t do—­what Muster Drew says, John—­whatever wull yer do with it?’