ought you what?"

"Did you know that they thought me _mad_?"

"They were wrong if they did. But Mrs. Thrale does not think you mad
now. I know she does not."

"Oh, I am glad." Gwen's white and strained look then caught her
attention, and she paused for reassurance. It was nothing, Gwen was
tired. It was the jolting of a quick drive, and so on. Mrs. Prichard got
back to her topic. "They _did_ think me mad, though. Do you know, my
dear"--she dropped her voice almost to a whisper--"I went near to
thinking myself mad. It was so strange! It was the mill-model. I wish
she had let me see it again. That might have set it all to rights. But
thinking like she did, maybe she was in the right. For see what it is
when the head goes wrong! I was calling to mind, all next day, when I
found out what they thought...."

"But they did not tell you they thought you mad. How did you know?"

"It came out by little things--odd talk at times.... It got in the air,
and then I saw the word on their lips.... I never _heard_ it, you
know.... What was I saying?"

"You were calling something to mind, all next day, you said. What was
that?"

"A man my husband would talk about, in Macquarie Gaol, whose head would
be all right so long as no cat came anigh him. So the others would find
a cat to start him off. Only my Ruth thought to take away what upset
_me_. 'Tis the same thing, turned about like."

Gwen allowed the illustration. "But why _did_ Mrs. Thrale think you mad,
over the mill-model?"

"My dear, because to her I must have _seemed_ mad, to say that was my
father's mill, and not her grandfather's."

Gwen kept a lock on her tongue. How easy to have said:--"Your father
_was_ her grandfather!" She said nothing.

"And yet, you know, how could I be off the thought it was so, with it
there before me, seeming like it did? I do assure you, there it seemed
to be--the very mill! There was my father, only small, and not much to
know him by, smoking. And there was our man, Muggeridge, that saw to the
waggon. And there was Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox, our horses. And there was
the great wheel the water shot below, to turn it, and the still water
above where Phoebe saw the heron, and called me--but it was gone!"
Tears were filling the old eyes, as the old lips recalled that
long-forgotten past. Then, as she went on, her voice broke to a sob, and
failed of utterance. But it came. "And there--and there--were I and my
darling, my Phoebe, that died in the c