is image fading. She would struggle to keep it bright and
fresh. She would grieve long and sincerely--and then she would be
quite happy. She wouldn't marry again; she wouldn't do anything
foolish. "No," he thought, "she'll just devote herself to the bairns,
working for them late and early, and managing the business as well as
I have managed it myself. She'll be cheated a bit here and there, as a
woman always is--but, all said and done, she'll do very well without
me. Customers will support her--the word will go round. 'Don't let's
turn our backs on the widow of that poor fellow Dale.'"

And he thought, with a bitterness of heart that almost made him sick,
that perhaps after his death many people might speak well of him; that
certainly in the little world of Vine-Pits Farm and the Cross Road
cottages there would be a natural inclination to exaggerate his few
good qualities and be gentle to his innumerable faults; so that a
sort of legend of virtue would weave itself about his memory, making
him a humble, insignificant, but local saint--to be placed at a
respectful distance and yet not too far from the shrine of that great
and illustrious saint the late Mr. Barradine. "Of course," people
might say, "one was a grand gentleman, and the other only a common
fellow who had raised himself a bit by hard work; but both of 'em were
good kind men, and both no doubt have met with the reward of their
goodness up there in Heaven."

As soon as he got into the wood he hurried as rapidly as he could
toward Kibworth Rocks; and then when he got near them he walked slowly
up and down the ride, with his head bowed and his hands clasped behind
his back. And each evening the same thing happened. Visions of Norah
assailed him; he passed again through the tortures of yearning desire
that he had felt when he first read her letter; and he said to
himself, "If proof was wanted, here's the proof. This would show me,
if I didn't know already, that I must do it."

In imagination he saw her sitting alone on a balk of timber by the
sea. Her hands lay loose in her lap; her neck was bent; her whole
attitude indicated dejection, loneliness, sadness. She was thinking
about him. She was thinking, "How cruel of him not to answer my sad
little letter. He can't be so busy but what he could have found time
to send me a few lines with his own hand. Just half a sheet of paper
would have been enough--with one or two ink crosses at the end, to
show me he prized t