d moved on. Neither had spoken; yet in the
country they would have roared their predictions about to-morrow to a
ploughman half a field away.

Dulse is roasted by twisting it round the tongs fired to a red-heat,
and the house was soon heavy with the smell of burning sea-weed. Leeby
was at the dresser munching it from a broth-plate, while Hendry, on his
knees at the fireplace, gingerly tore off the blades of dulse that were
sticking to the tongs, and licked his singed fingers.

"Whaur's yer mother?" he asked Leeby.

"Ou," said Leeby, "whaur would she be but in her bed?"

Hendry took the tongs to the door, and would have cleaned them himself,
had not Leeby (who often talked his interfering ways over with her
mother) torn them from his hands.

"Leeby!" cried Jess at that moment.

"Ay," answered Leeby, leisurely, not noticing, as I happened to do,
that Jess spoke in an agitated voice.

"What is't?" asked Hendry, who liked to be told things.

He opened the door of the bed.

"Yer mother's no weel," he said to Leeby.

Leeby ran to the bed, and I went ben the house. In another two minutes
we were a group of four in the kitchen, staring vacantly. Death could
not have startled us more, tapping thrice that quiet night on the
window-pane.

"It's diphtheria!" said Jess, her hands trembling as she buttoned her
wrapper.

She looked at me, and Leeby looked at me.

"It's no, it's no," cried Leeby, and her voice was as a fist shaken at
my face. She blamed me for hesitating in my reply. But ever since
this malady left me a lonely dominie for life, diphtheria has been a
knockdown word for me. Jess had discovered a great white spot on her
throat. I knew the symptoms.

"Is't dangerous?" asked Hendry, who once had a headache years before,
and could still refer to it as a reminiscence.

"Them 'at has 't never recovers," said Jess, sitting down very quietly.
A stick fell from the fire, and she bent forward to replace it.

"They do recover," cried Leeby, again turning angry eyes on me.

I could not face her; I had known so many who did not recover. She put
her hand on her mother's shoulder.

"Mebbe ye would be better in yer bed," suggested Hendry.

No one spoke.

"When I had the headache," said Hendry, "I was better in my bed."

Leeby had taken Jess's hand--a worn old hand that had many a time gone
out in love and kindness when younger hands were cold. Poets have sung
and fighting men have done great deeds fo