come to fulness o’ life than fly them an’ cut your days short an’ go into the next world empty-handed.  Caan’t you see it?  What would Clem say?  He’d judge you hard—­such a lover o’ li’l childer as him.  ’T is the first framework of an immortal soul you’ve got unfoldin’, like a rosebud hid in the green, an’ ban’t for you to nip that life for your awn whim an’ let the angels in heaven be fewer by wan.  You must live.  An’ the bwoy’ll graw into a tower of strength for ‘e—­a tower of strength an’ a glass belike wheer you’ll see Clem rose again.”

“The shame of it.  My mother and Will—­Will who’s a hard judge, an’ such a clean man.”

“‘Clean’!  Christ A’mighty!  You’d madden a saint of heaven!  Weern’t Clem clean, tu?  If God sends fire-fire breaks out—­sweet, livin’ fire.  You must go through with it—­aye, an’ call the bwoy Clem, tu.  Be you shamed of him as he lies here?  Be you feared of anything the airth can do to you when you look at him?  Do ’e think Heaven’s allus hard?  No, I tell ’e, not to the young—­not to the young.  The wind’s mostly tempered to the shorn lamb, though the auld ewe do oftentimes sting for it, an’ get the seeds o’ death arter shearing.  Wait, and be strong, till you feel Clem’s baaby in your arms.  That’ll be reward enough, an’ you won’t care no more for the world then.  His son, mind; who be you to take life, an’ break the buds of Clem’s plantin’?  Worse than to go in another’s garden an’ tear down green fruit.”

So she pleaded volubly, with an electric increase of vitality, and continued to pour out a torrent of words, until Chris solemnly promised, before God and the dead, that she would not take her life.  Having done so, some new design informed her.

“I must go,” she said; “the moon has set and dawn is near.  Dying be so easy; living so hard.  But live I will; I swear it, though theer’s awnly my poor mad brain to shaw how.”

“Clem’s son, mind.  An’ let me be the first to see it, for I feel’t will be the gude pleasure of God I should.”

“An’ you promise to say no word, whatever betides, an’ whatever you hear?”

“Dumb I’ll be, as him theer—­dumb, countin’ the weeks an’ months.”

“Day’s broke, an’ I must go home-along,” said Chris. She repeated the words mechanically, then moved away without any formal farewell.  At the door she turned, hastened back, kissed the dead man’s face again, and then departed, while the other woman looked at her but spoke no more.

Alone, with the struggle over and her object won, the mother shrank and dwindled again and grew older momentarily.  Then she relapsed into the same posture as before, and anon, tears bred of new thoughts began to trickle painfully from their parched fountains.  She did not move, but let them roll unwiped away.  Presently her head sank back, her cap fell off and white hair dropped about her face.

Fingers of light seemed lifting the edges of the blind.  They gained strength as the candle waned, and presently at cock-crow, when unnumbered clarions proclaimed morning, grey dawn with golden eyes brightened upon a dead man and an ancient woman fast asleep beside him.