common to farmyards of swallowing up
and losing its human population. The poultry followed her in interested
fashion, and swine grunted interrogations at her from behind the bars of
their styes, but barnyard and rickyard, orchard and stables and dairy,
gave no reward to her search. Then, as she retraced her steps towards
the kitchen, she came suddenly on her cousin, young Mr. Jim, as every one
called him, who divided his time between amateur horse-dealing, rabbit-
shooting, and flirting with the farm maids.

"I'm afraid old Martha is dying," said Emma. Jim was not the sort of
person to whom one had to break news gently.

"Nonsense," he said; "Martha means to live to a hundred. She told me so,
and she'll do it."

"She may be actually dying at this moment, or it may just be the
beginning of the break-up," persisted Emma, with a feeling of contempt
for the slowness and dulness of the young man.

A grin spread over his good-natured features.

"It don't look like it," he said, nodding towards the yard. Emma turned
to catch the meaning of his remark. Old Martha stood in the middle of a
mob of poultry scattering handfuls of grain around her. The turkey-cock,
with the bronzed sheen of his feathers and the purple-red of his wattles,
the gamecock, with the glowing metallic lustre of his Eastern plumage,
the hens, with their ochres and buffs and umbers and their scarlet combs,
and the drakes, with their bottle-green heads, made a medley of rich
colour, in the centre of which the old woman looked like a withered stalk
standing amid a riotous growth of gaily-hued flowers. But she threw the
grain deftly amid the wilderness of beaks, and her quavering voice
carried as far as the two people who were watching her. She was still
harping on the theme of death coming to the farm.

"I knew 'twere a-coming. There's been signs an' warnings."

"Who's dead, then, old Mother?" called out the young man.

"'Tis young Mister Ladbruk," she shrilled back; "they've just a-carried
his body in. Run out of the way of a tree that was coming down an' ran
hisself on to an iron post. Dead when they picked un up. Aye, I knew
'twere coming."

And she turned to fling a handful of barley at a belated group of guinea-
fowl that came racing toward her.

* * * * *

The farm was a family property, and passed to the rabbit-shooting cousin
as the next-of-kin. Emma Ladbruk drifted out of its history as a bee
that had wandered in at an open wi