on
of him that he was ill. "I doubt I'm badly," he thought, and tried to
realize his position. Presently he attempted to rise and call back the
countryman with the horses. Lifting himself on one trembling knee, he
waved a feeble arm spasmodically in the air, and called and called
again. The voice startled him; it seemed not to be his own. His
strength was spent. He sank back and remembered no more.

The man in the smock was gone, but another countryman was coming down
the road at that moment from the direction of Carlisle. This was no
other than little blink-eyed Reuben Thwaite. He was sitting muffled up
in his farm wagon and singing merry snatches to keep the cold out of
his lungs. Reuben had been at Carlisle over night with sundry hanks of
thread, which he had sold to the linen weavers. He had found a good
market by coming so far, and he was returning to Wythburn in high
feckle. When he came (as he would have said) "ebbn fornenst" Robbie
lying at the roadside, he jumped down from his seat. "What poor lad's
this? Why, what! What say! What!" holding himself back to grasp the
situation, "Robbie Anderson!"

Then a knowing smile overspread Reuben's wrinkled features as he
stooped to pat and push the prostrate man, in an effort to arouse him
to consciousness.

"Tut, Robbie, lad; Robbie, ma lad! This wark will nivver do, Robbie!
Brocken loose agen, aye! Come, Robbie, up, lad!"

Robbie lay insensible to all Reuben's appeals, whether of the nature
of banter or half-serious menace.

"Weel, weel, the lad _has_ had a fair cargo intil him this voyage,
anyway."

There was obviously no likelihood of awakening Robbie, so with a world
of difficulty, with infinite puffing and fuming and perspiring, and
the help of a passing laborer, Reuben contrived to get the young
fellow lifted bodily into his cart. Lying there at full length, a
number of the empty thread sacks were thrown over the insensible man,
and then Reuben mounted to his seat and drove off.

"Poor old Martha Anderson!" muttered Reuben to himself. "It's weel
she's gone, poor body! It wad nigh have brocken her heart--and it's my
belief 'at it did."

They had not gone far before Reuben himself, with the inconsistency of
more pretentious moralists, felt an impulse to indulge in that benign
beverage of which he had just deplored the effects. Drawing up with
this object at a public house that stood on the road, he called for a
glass of hot spirits. He was in the act of ta