could have had strength, the cruel self-
piercing strength, to say what. she had done;
to stub herself with that stern resolution, of
which the scar would remain till her dying
day. It might have been right; but, as she
sickened, she wished she had not instinctively
chosen the right. How luxurious a
life haunted by no stern sense of duty must
be! And many led this kind of life; why
could not she? O, for one hour again of
his sweet company! If he came now, she
would agree to whatever he proposed.

It was a fever of the mind. She passed
through it, and came out healthy, if weak.
She was capable once more of taking pleasure
in following an unseen guide through briar
and brake. She returned with tenfold affection
to her protecting care of Willie. She
acknowledged to herself that he was to be
her all-in-all in life. She made him her
constant companion. For his sake, as the
real owner of Yew Nook, and she as his
steward and guardian, she began that course
of careful saving, and that love of acquisition,
which afterwards gained for her the reputation
of being miserly. She still thought that
he might regain a scanty portion of sense,
enough to require some simple pleasures and
excitement, which would cost money. And
money should not be wanting. Peggy rather
assisted her in the formation of her
parsimonious habits than otherwise; economy was
the order of the district, and a certain degree
of respectable avarice the characteristic of
age. Only Willie was never stinted or
hindered of anything that the two women
thought could give him pleasure for want of
money.

There was one gratification which Susan
felt was needed for the restoration of her
mind to its more healthy state, after she had
passed through the whirling fever, when
duty was as nothing, and anarchy reigned;
a gratification—that somehow was to be her
last burst of unreasonableness; of which she
knew and recognised pain as the sure
consequence. She must see him once more,—
herself unseen.

The week before the Christmas of this
memorable year, she went out in the dusk of
the early winter evening, wrapped up close
in shawl and cloak. She wore her dark
shawl under her cloak, putting it over her
head in lieu of a bonnet; for she knew that
she might have to wait long in concealment.
Then she tramped over the wet fell-path,
shut in by misty rain for miles and miles, till
she came to the place where he was lodging;
a farm-house in Langdale, with a steep stony
lane leading up to it: this lane was entered
by a gate out of the main road, and by the
gate were a few bushes—thorns; but of them
the leaves had fallen, and they offered no
concealment: an old wreck of a yew-tree
grew among them, however, and underneath
that Susan cowered down, shrouding her
face, of which the colour might betray her,
with a corner of her shawl. Long did she
wait; cold and cramped she became, too
damp and stitf to change her posture readily.
And after all, he might never come! But,
she would wait till daylight, if need were;
and she pulled out a crust, with which she
had providently supplied herself. The rain,
had ceased,—a dull still brooding weather
had succeeded; it was a night to hear distant
sounds. She heard horses' hoofs striking
and plashing in the stones, and in the pools
of the road at her back. Two horses; not
well-ridden, or evenly guided, as she could
tell.

Michael Hurst and a companion drew
near; not tipsy, but not sober. They stopped
at the gate to bid each other a maudlin farewell.
Michael stooped forward to catch the
latch with the hook of the stick which he
carried; he dropped the stick, and it fell
with one end close to Susan,—indeed, with
the slightest change of posture, she could
have opened the gate for him. He swore a
great oath, and struck his horse with his
closed fist, as if that animal had been to
blame; then he dismounted, opened the gate,
and fumbled about for his stick. When he
had found it (Susan had touched the other
end) his first use of it was to flog his horse
well, and she had much ado to avoid its
kicks and plunges. Then, still swearing, he
staggered up the lane, for it was evident he
was not sober enough to remount.

By daylight Susan was back and at her
daily labours at Yew Nook. When the
spring came, Michael Hurst was married to
Eleanor Hebthwaite. Others, too, were
married, and christenings made their firesides
merry and glad; or they travelled, and
came back after long years with many
wondrous tales. More rarely, perhaps, a Dalesman
changed his dwelling. But to all households
more change came than to Yew Nook.
There the seasons came round with
monotonous sameness; or, if they brought
mutation, it was of a slow, and decaying, and
depressing kind. Old Peggy died. Her
silent sympathy, concealed under much
roughness, was a loss to Susan Dixon. Susan
was not yet thirty when this happened, but
she looked a middle-aged, not to say an
elderly woman. People affirmed that she
had never recovered her complexion since
that fever, a dozen years ago, which killed
her father, and left Will Dixon an idiot. But
besides her grey sallowness, the lines in her
face were strong, and deep, and hard. The
movements of her eye-balls were slow and
heavy; the wrinkles at the corners of her
mouth and eyes were planted firm and sure;
not an ounce of unnecessary flesh was there
on her bones—every muscle started strong
and ready for use. She needed all this
bodily strength to a degree that no human
creature, now Peggy was dead, knew of: for
Willie had grown up large and strong in
body, and, in general, docile enough in mind;