ou. Depper he can look arter hisself; his
time for prayin' ain't, so ter say, come yet. Yours is. I should like
to hear a 'Lord help me,' now and agin from yer lips, when I tarn ye in
the bed. I don't think but what yu'd be the better for it, pore
critter. Your time's a-gettin' short, and 'tis best ter go resigned."

"I cud go resigned if 'tweren't for Depper," the dying woman made her
moan.

"I can't think what he'll du all alone in th' house and me gone!" she
often whimpered. "A man can't fend for 'isself, like a woman can. They
ha'n't the know ter du it. Depper, he ain't no better'n a child about
makin' the kettle bile, and sechlike. It'll go hard, me bein' put out
o' th' way, wi' Depper."

"Sarve 'm right," Mrs Brome always stoically said. "He ha' been a bad
man to you, Car'line. I don' know whu should speak to that if you and
me don't, bor."

"He ha'n't so much as laid a finger on me since I was ill," Car'line
said, making what defence for the absent man she could.

"All the same, when you're a-feelin' wholly low agin, jes' you say to
yourself, 'Th' Lord help me!' 'Tis only dacent, you a dyin' woman, to
do it. When ye ha'n't got the strength ter say it, I'll go on my knees
and say it for ye, come to that, Car'line," the notorious wrongdoer
promised.

* * * * *

They sent for Depper to the White Hart to come home and see his wife
die.

"I ain't, so ter say, narvish, bein' alone with 'er, and would as lief
see the pore sufferin' critter draw her las' breath as not, but I hold
'tis dacent for man and wife to be together, come to th' finish; an' so
I ha' sent for ye," Mrs Brome told him.

Depper shed as many tears over his old woman as would have been
expected from the best husband in the world; and Car'line let her dying
gaze rest on him with as much affection, perhaps, as if he had indeed
been that ideal person.

"There'll be money a-comin' in fro' th' club," were almost her last
words to him. She was speaking of the burial-club, into which she had
always contrived to pay the necessary weekly pence; she knew it to be
the surest consolation she could offer him.

Depper had made arrangements already for the payment of the eleven
pounds from the burial-club; he had drunk a pint or two extra, daily,
for the last week, the innkeeper being willing to trust him, in
consideration of the expected windfall. The excitement of this handling
of sudden wealth, and the dying o