“I mind me when my own lass was no bigger nor this,” said Sim.

Ralph did not answer, but turned his head aside and listened.

“She was her mammy’s darling, too, she was.”

Sim’s voice was thick in his throat.

“And mine as well,” he added.  “We used to say to her, laughing and teasing like, ’Who will ye marry, Rotie?’—­we called her Rotie then,—­’who will ye marry, Rotie, when ye grow up to be a big, big woman?’ ‘My father,’ she would say, and throw her little arms about my neck and kiss me.”

Sim raised his hard fingers to his forehead to cover his eyes.

Ralph still sat silent, his head aside, looking into the fire.

“That’s many and many a year agone; leastways, so it seems.  My wife was living then.  We were married in Gaskarth, but work was bad, and we packed up and went to live for a while in a great city, leagues and leagues to the south.  And there my poor girl, Josephine—­I called her Josie for short, and because it was more kind and close like—­there my poor girl fell ill and died.  Her face got paler day by day, but she kept a brave heart—­she was just such like as Rotha that way—­and she tended the house till the last, she did.”

A louder burst of merriment than usual came from the distant room.  The fellows were singing a snatch together.

“Do you know, Rotha called her mother, Josie, too.  I checked her, I did; but my poor girl she said, said she, ’Never mind; the little one has been hearkening to yourself.’  You’d have cried, I think, if you’d been with us the day she died.  I was sitting at work, and she called out that she felt faint; so I jumped up and held her in my arms and sent our little Rotha for a neighbor.  But it was too late.  My poor darling was gone in a minute, and when the wee thing came running back to us, with red cheeks, she looked frightened, and cried, ’Josie!  Josie!’ ‘My poor Rotie, my poor little lost Rotie,’ I said, ’our dear Josie, she is in heaven!’ Then the little one cried, ‘No, no, no’; and wept, and wept till—­till—­I wept with her.”

The door of the distant apartment must have been again thrown open, for a robustious fellow could be heard to sing a stave of a drinking song.  The words came clearly in the silence that preceded a general outburst of chorus:—­

    “Then to the Duke fill,
       Fill up the glass;
     The son of our martyr, beloved of the King.”

“We buried her there,” continued Sim; “ay, we buried her in the town; and, with the crowds and the noise above her, there sleeps my brave Josie, and I shall see her face no more.”

Ralph rose up, and walked to the door by which he and Sim had entered from the yard of the inn.  He opened it and stood for a moment on the threshold.  The snow was falling in thick flakes.  Already it covered the ground and lay heavy on the roofs of the outhouses and on the boughs of the leafless trees.  A great calm was on the earth and in the air.