“Why, mother,” said Seth, “how is it as father’s working so late?”

“It’s none o’ thy feyther as is a-workin’; it’s thy brother as does iverything, for there’s niver nobody else i’ th’ way to do nothin’.”

Lisbeth Bede was going on, for she was not at all afraid of Seth—­who had never in his life spoken a harsh word to his mother—­and usually poured into his ears all the querulousness which was repressed by the awe which mingled itself with her idolatrous love of Adam.

But Seth, with an anxious look, had passed into the workshop, and said, “Addy, how’s this?  What!  Father’s forgot the coffin?”

“Ay, lad, th’ old tale; but I shall get it done,” said Adam, looking up.  “Why, what’s the matter with thee—­thee’st in trouble?”

Seth’s eyes were red, and there was a look of deep depression on his mild face.

“Yes, Addy, but it’s what must be borne, and can’t be helped.  Let me take my turn now, and do thee go to bed.”

“No, lad; I’d rather go on, now I’m in harness.  The coffin’s promised to be ready at Brox’on by seven o’clock to-morrow morning.  I’ll call thee up at sunrise, to help me to carry it when it’s done.  Go and eat thy supper and shut the door, so as I mayn’t hear mother’s talk.”

Adam worked throughout the night, thinking of his childhood and its happy days, and then of the days of sadness that came later when his father began to loiter at public-houses, and Lisbeth began to cry at home.  He remembered well the night of shame and anguish when he first saw his father quite wild and foolish.

The two brothers set off in the early sunlight, carrying the long coffin on their shoulders.  By six o’clock they had reached Broxton, and were on their way home.

When they were coming across the valley, and had entered the pasture through which the brook ran, Seth said suddenly, beginning to walk faster, “Why, what’s that sticking against the willow?”

They both ran forward, and dragged the tall, heavy body out of the water; and then looked with mute awe at the glazed eyes—­forgetting everything but that their father lay dead before them.

Adam’s mind rushed back over the past in a flood of relenting and pity.  Only a few hours ago, and the gray-haired father, of whom he had been thinking with a sort of hardness as certain to live to be a thorn in his side, was perhaps even then struggling with that watery death!

II.—­The Hall Farm

It is a very fine old place of red brick, the Hall Farm—­once the residence of a country squire, and the Hall.

Plenty of life there, though this is the drowsiest time of the year, just before hay-harvest; and it is the drowsiest time of the day, too, for it is half-past three by Mrs. Poyser’s handsome eight-day clock.

Mrs. Poyser, a good-looking woman, not more than eight-and-thirty, of fair complexion and sandy hair, well shaped, light-footed, had just taken up her knitting, and was seated with her niece, Dinah Morris.  Another motherless niece, Hetty Sorrel, a distractingly pretty girl of seventeen, was busy in the adjoining dairy.