All that night and the next night he lay beside her.  The funeral passed like a fantastic interlude between the long acts of his passion.  His great sorrow made him humble to Mrs. Gale so that he allowed her to sustain him with food and drink.  And on the third day it was known throughout Garthdale that young Greatorex, who had lost his father, had saved his mare.

Only Steven Rowcliffe knew that the mare had saved young Greatorex.

* * * * *

And the little phial of chlorodyne was put back among the cobwebs and forgotten.

XIV

Down at the Vicarage the Vicar was wrangling with his youngest daughter.  For the third time Alice declared that she was not well and that she didn’t want her milk.

“Whether you want it or not you’ve got to drink it,” said the Vicar.

Alice took the glass in her lap and looked at it.

“Am I to stand over you till you drink it?”

Alice put the rim of the glass to her mouth and shuddered.

“I can’t,” she said.  “It’ll make me sick.”

“Leave the poor child alone, Papa,” said Gwenda.

But the Vicar ignored Gwenda.

“You’ll drink it, if I stand here all night,” he said.

Alice struggled with a spasm in her throat.  He held the glass for her while she groped piteously.

“Oh, where’s my hanky?”

With superhuman clemency he produced his own.

“It’ll serve you right if I’m ill,” said Alice.

“Come,” said the Vicar in his wisdom and his patience.  “Come.”

He proffered the disgusting cup again.

“I’d drink it and have done with it, if I were you,” said Mary in her soft voice.

Mary’s soft voice was too much for Alice.

“Why c-can’t you leave me alone?  You—­you—­beast, Mary,” she sobbed.

And Mr. Cartaret began again, “Am I to stand here——­”

Alice got up, she broke loose from them and left the room.

“You might have known she wasn’t going to drink it,” Gwenda said.

But the Vicar never knew when he was beaten.

“She would have drunk it,” he said, “if Mary hadn’t interfered.”

* * * * *

Alice had not got the pneumonia that had killed John Greatorex.  Such happiness, she reflected, was not for her.  She had desired it too much.

But she was doing very well with her anaemia.

Bloodless and slender and inert, she dragged herself about the village.  She could not get away from it because of the steep hills she would have had to climb.  A small, unhappy ghost, she haunted the fields in the bottom and the path along the beck that led past Mrs. Gale’s cottage.

The sight of Alice was more than ever annoying to the Vicar.  Only you wouldn’t have known it.  As she grew whiter and weaker he braced himself, and became more hearty and robust.  When he caught her lying on the sofa he spoke to her in a robust and hearty tone.