weakened voice.

"He's olas running on that, too," whispered Mattha to Rotha. "Dusta
mind 'at laal Reuben said the same?"

In a soft and pleading tone Robbie mumbled on,--

"Don't greet, mammy, or ye'll kill me sure enough. Killing _you?_ Ey,
it's true it's true; but I'll mend my management--I _will_." There
were sobs in Robbie's voice, but no tears in his bloodshot eyes.

"There, there, Robbie," whispered Mrs. Branthwaite soothingly in his
ear; "rest thee still, Robbie, rest thee still."

It was a pitiful scene. The remorse of the poor, worn, wayward,
tender-hearted lad seemed to rend the soul in his unconscious body.

"If he could but sleep!" said Mrs. Branthwaite; "but he cannot."

Liza got up and went out.

Robbie struggled to raise himself on one elbow. His face, red as a
furnace, was turned aside as though in the act of listening for some
noise far away. Then in a thick whisper he said,--

"Fifty strides north of the bridge. No dreaming about it--north, I
say, north."

Robbie sank back exhausted, and Rotha prepared to leave.

"It were that ducking of his heed did it, sure enough," said Mattha,
"that and the drink together. I mind Bobbie's father--just sic like,
just sic like! Poor auld Martha, she _hed_ a sad bout of it, she hed,
what with father and son. And baith good at the bottom, too, baith,
poor lads."

A graver result than any that Mattha dreamt of hung at this moment on
Robbie's insensibility, and when consciousness returned the
catastrophe had fallen.

CHAPTER XL. GARTH AND THE QUAKERS.

As Rotha left the weaver's cottage she found Liza in the porch.

"I'm just laughing at the new preachers," she said huskily. She was
turning her head aside slyly to brush the tears from her eyes into a
shawl which was over her head.

"There they are by the Lion. It's wrong to laugh, but they are real
funny, aye!"

The artifice was too palpable to escape Rotha's observation. Without a
word she put her arms about Liza and kissed her. Then the lurking
tears gushed out openly, and the girl wept on her breast. They parted
in silence, and Rotha walked towards a little company gathered under
the glow of a red sun on the highway, and almost in front of the
village inn. They were the "new preachers" of whom Liza had spoken.
The same that had, according to Robbie's landlady, foretold the
plague. They were three men, and they stood in the middle of a ring of
men, women, and children. One of them, tall a