ooked with mute awe at the glazed eyes, forgetting that there was need
for action--forgetting everything but that their father lay dead before
them. Adam was the first to speak.

"I'll run to Mother," he said, in a loud whisper. "I'll be back to thee
in a minute."

Poor Lisbeth was busy preparing her sons' breakfast, and their porridge
was already steaming on the fire. Her kitchen always looked the pink of
cleanliness, but this morning she was more than usually bent on making
her hearth and breakfast-table look comfortable and inviting.

"The lads 'ull be fine an' hungry," she said, half-aloud, as she stirred
the porridge. "It's a good step to Brox'on, an' it's hungry air o'er
the hill--wi' that heavy coffin too. Eh! It's heavier now, wi' poor Bob
Tholer in't. Howiver, I've made a drap more porridge nor common this
mornin'. The feyther 'ull happen come in arter a bit. Not as he'll ate
much porridge. He swallers sixpenn'orth o' ale, an' saves a hap'orth o'
por-ridge--that's his way o' layin' by money, as I've told him many a
time, an' am likely to tell him again afore the day's out. Eh, poor mon,
he takes it quiet enough; there's no denyin' that."

But now Lisbeth heard the heavy "thud" of a running footstep on the
turf, and, turning quickly towards the door, she saw Adam enter, looking
so pale and overwhelmed that she screamed aloud and rushed towards him
before he had time to speak.

"Hush, Mother," Adam said, rather hoarsely, "don't be frightened.
Father's tumbled into the water. Belike we may bring him round again.
Seth and me are going to carry him in. Get a blanket and make it hot as
the fire."

In reality Adam was convinced that his father was dead but he knew there
was no other way of repressing his mother's impetuous wailing grief than
by occupying her with some active task which had hope in it.

He ran back to Seth, and the two sons lifted the sad burden in
heart-stricken silence. The wide-open glazed eyes were grey, like
Seth's, and had once looked with mild pride on the boys before whom
Thias had lived to hang his head in shame. Seth's chief feeling was awe
and distress at this sudden snatching away of his father's soul; but
Adam's mind rushed back over the past in a flood of relenting and pity.
When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness
that we repent of, but our severity.

Chapter V

The Rector

BEFORE twelve o'clock there had been some heavy storms of rain, and