nd, and never
knows nothing of anything till the morning. I could, have druv my head
agin the door-post."

"Well, she cannot help sleeping."

"No," after a long pause, "that's true enough. I tell you what it
is--_I_ don't want to live for ever."

"Cannot you do anything to help yourself? Have you seen the doctor?"

"Doctor!" in great scorn. "He's no more use than that there dog behind
me, nor yet half so much. I am better when I am at work, that's all as
I can tell."

"Have you had plenty to do lately?"

"No, not much. Folk are allers after me in the summer-time, but in the
winter, when their gardens don't want doing, they never have nothing to
say to me. There's one thing about my missus, though. She's precious
careful. I never touches the money part of the business. So we get's
along."

Miriam knew the "missus" well. She was a little thin-lipped woman,
who, notwithstanding her poverty, was most particularly clean. No
speck of dirt was to be seen on her person or in her cottage, but she
was as hard as flint. She never showed the least affection for her
husband. They had married late in life--why, nobody could tell--and
had one child, a girl, whom the mother seemed to disregard just as she
did her husband, saving that she dressed her and washed her with the
same care which she bestowed on her kettle and candlesticks.

"It's a good thing for you, Fitchew, that she is what she is."

Fitchew hesitated for some time.

"Yes, well, I said to myself, after I'd had a cup of tea and something
to eat this morning--I didn't say it afore then, though--that it might
be wuss. If she was allus a slaverin' on me and a pityin' me, it
wouldn't do me no good; and then we are as we are, and we must make the
best of it."

When Miriam parted from Fitchew she had still ten minutes' walk.
Before the ten minutes had expired the black veil of rain-cloud was
rolled still farther to the east, and the crescent of the young moon
gleamed in the dying twilight.

It poured with rain nevertheless during the night Miriam lay and
listened, thinking it would be wet and miserable on the following day.
She dropped off to sleep, and at four she rose and went to the window
and opened it wide. In streamed the fresh south-west morning air,
pure, delicious, scented with all that was sweet from fields and woods,
and the bearer inland even as far as Cowfold of Atlantic vitality,
dissipating fogs, disinfecting poisons--the Life-Giver.