f his wife, and the extra drink
combined, completely upset his mental equilibrium. In the first moments
of his widower-hood he was prostrate with emotion.

Dragged downstairs by the strong arm of Dinah Brome, he subsided into
the chair on the hearth, opposite that for ever empty one of his old
woman's; and with elbows on knees and head on hand he hiccoughed and
moaned and wept aloud.

Above, Dinah Brome and that old woman who had a reputation in Dulditch
for the laying-out of corpses, decked the poor cold body in such warmth
of white flannelette, and such garniture of snipped-out frilling as,
alive, Car'line Kittle could never have hoped to attain to.

These last duties achieved, Dinah descended, her arms full of blankets
and pillows, no longer necessary above. These, with much banging and
shaking, she spread upon the downstairs couch, indicating to the still
weeping Depper it was there he was expected to pass the night.

"Bor, you may well blubber!" she said to him, with a kind of
comfortable scorn of him and his sorrow. "You 'ont ketch me a-dryin'
yer tears for ye, and so I tell ye flat. A crule husban' yu ha' been as
any woman ever had. If ever there was a wife who was kep' short, and
used hard, that was _yer_ wife, Depper, my man! Bad you ha' been to her
that's gone to 'er account, in all ways; who should know that better'n
me, I'll ask ye? An' if at las' 'tis come home to ye, sarve ye wholly
right. Tha's all the comfort ye'll get from me, bor."

"Stop along of me!" Depper cried, as, her work being finished, she
moved to the door. "'Taint right as I should be left here alone; and me
feelin' that low, and a'most dazed with affliction."

"Tha's how you've a right to feel," the stern woman said, unmoved by
his tears.

"I keep a-thinkin' of wha's layin' up above theer, Dinah."

"Pity you di'n't think on 'er more in 'er lifetime."

"'Taint nat'ral as I should be left wholly alone with a dead woman.
'Taint a nat'ral thing, I'm a-sayin', for me to du, Dinah, ter pass the
night alone along o' my old missus's corp."

"Bor, 'taint the fust onnat'ral thing you ha' done i' your life," Mrs
Brome said; and went out and shut the door.

An hour or so later Depper opened it, and going hurriedly past the
intervening cottages, knocked stealthily upon the door of Dinah Brome.

She looked out upon him presently from her bedroom window, her dark,
crinkled hair rough from the pillow, a shawl pulled over her nightgown.

"Whu