n the small square window looking out
at the drifting sky, and at this strange world which God has made so
queerly--so very queerly.

An old woman, the wife of a labourer, had been set to nurse him, for the
doctor had said that he was not to be left. She moved about the room,
arranging and ordering, grumbling to herself from time to time at this
lonely task which had been assigned to her. There were some flowers in
broken jars upon a cross-beam, and these, with a touch of tenderness,
she carried over and arranged upon a deal packing-case beside the
patient's head. He lay motionless, and as he breathed there came a
gritty rubbing sound from somewhere in his side, but he followed his
companion about with his eyes and even smiled once as she grouped the
flowers round him.

He smiled again when he heard that Mrs. Foster and her daughter had been
to ask after him that evening. They had been down to the Post Office
together, where Dolly had sent off a letter which she had very carefully
drawn up, addressed to Elias Mason, Esq., and explaining to that
gentleman that she had formed her plans for life, and that he need spare
himself the pain of coming for his answer on the Saturday. As they came
back they stopped in the stable and inquired through the loft door as
to the sufferer. From where they stood they could hear that horrible
grating sound in his breathing. Dolly hurried away with her face quite
pale under her freckles. She was too young to face the horrid details of
suffering, and yet she was a year older than this poor waif, who lay in
silence, facing death itself.

All night he lay very quiet--so quiet that were it not for that one
sinister sound his nurse might have doubted whether life was still in
him. She had watched him and tended him as well as she might, but she
was herself feeble and old, and just as the morning light began to steal
palely through the small loft window, she sank back in her chair in a
dreamless sleep. Two hours passed, and the first voices of the men as
they gathered for their work aroused her. She sprang to her feet.
Great heaven! the pallet was empty. She rushed down into the stables,
distracted, wringing her hands. There was no sign of him. But the stable
door was open. He must have walked-but how could he walk?--he must have
crawled--have writhed that way. Out she rushed, and as they heard her
tale, the newly risen labourers ran with her, until the farmer with his
wife and daughter were c