never once--only, you know, he gave up his work
at the mine, and went back to the charcoal-pit when Ralphie came. But he
never said a word."

Greta did not answer. There was another pause. Then Mercy said, in a
stronger voice, "Will it be soon--the trial?"

"As soon as your eyes are better," said Greta, earnestly; "everything
depends on your recovery."

At that moment the bedroom door was pushed open with a little lordly
bang, and the great wee man entered with his piece of bread stuck rather
insecurely on one prong of a fork.

"Toas," he explained complacently, "toas," and walked up to the empty
grate and stretched his arm over the fender at the cold bars.

"Why, there's no fire for toast, you darling goose," said Greta,
catching him in her arms, much to his masculine vexation.

Mercy had risen on an elbow, and her face was full of the yearning of
the blind. Then she lay back.

"Never mind," she said to herself in a faltering voice, "let me lie
quiet and think of all his pretty ways."

CHAPTER VII.

Greta returned to the vicarage toward noon, and overtook Parson
Christian and Peter in the lonnin, the one carrying a scythe over his
shoulder, the other a bundle of rushes under his one arm. The parson was
walking in silence under the noontide sun, his straw hat tipped back
from his forehead and his eyes on the ground. He was busy with his own
reflections. It was not until Greta had tripped up to his side and
slipped his scythe-stone from its strap in the pole that the parson was
awakened from his reverie.

"Great news, Greta--great news, my lass!" he said in answer to her
liberal tender in exchange for his thoughts. "How well it's said, that
he that diggeth a pit for another should look that he fall not into it
himself."

"What news, Mr. Christian?" said Greta, and her color heightened.

"Well, we've been mowing the grass in the church-yard, Peter and I, and
the scythe is old like ourselves, and it wanted tempering. So away we
went to the smithy to have it ground, and who should come up but Robbie
Atkinson, leading hassocks from Longridge. And Robbie would fain have us
go with him and be cheerful at the Flying Horse. Well, we'd each had a
pot of ale and milk, when in came Natt, the stableman at Ritson's, all
lather like one of his horses after his master has been astride her. And
Natt was full of a great quarrel at the Ghyll, wherein young Mr. Hugh
had tried to turn yonder man out of the house in t