“Alone, mother!  Did you say alone?” asked Garth.

“We’re not alone, mother.  Some one has come nigh to us.”

Mrs. Garth looked up amazed, and half turned in her seat to glance watchfully around.

“Mother,” said Garth, “did you ever pray?”

“Hod thy tongue, lad, hod thy tongue,” said Mrs. Garth, with a whimper.

“Did you ever pray, mother?” repeated Garth, his red eyes aflame, and his voice cracking in his throat.  “Whisht, Joey, whisht!”

“Mother, we’ve not lived over well, you and I; but maybe God would forgive us, after all.”

“Hod thy tongue, my lad; do, now, do.”

Mrs. Garth fumbled with the bedclothes, and tucked them about the sufferer.

Her son turned his face full upon hers, and their eyes met.

“Dunnet look at me like that,” she said, trying to escape his gaze.  “What’s comin’ ower thee, my lad, that thou looks so, and talks so?”

“What’s coming over me, mother?  Shall I tell thee?  It’s Death that’s coming over me; that’s what it is, mother—­Death!”

“Dunnet say that, Joey.”

The old woman threw her apron over her head and sobbed.

Garth looked at her, with never a tear in his wide eyes.

“Mother,” said the poor fellow again in his weak, cracked voice,—­“mother, did you ever pray?”

Mrs. Garth uncovered her head.  Her furrowed face was wet.  She rocked herself and moaned.

“Ey, lad, I mind that I did when I was a wee bit of a girl.  I had rosy cheeks then, and my own auld mother wad kiss me then.  Ey, it’s true.  We went to church on a Sunday mornin’ and all the bells ringin’.  Ey, I mind that, but it’s a wa’, wa’ off, my lad, it’s a wa’, wa’ off.”

The day was gaunt and dreary.  Toward nightfall the wind arose, and sometimes its dismal wail seemed to run around the house.  The river, too, now swollen and turbulent, that flowed beneath the neighboring bridge, added its voice of lamentation as it wandered on and on to the ocean far away.

In the blacksmith’s cottage another wanderer was journeying yet faster to a more distant ocean.  The darkness closed in.  Garth was tossing on his bed.  His mother was rocking herself at his side.  All else was still.

Then a step was heard on the shingle without, and a knock came to the door.  The blacksmith struggled to lift his head and listen.  Mrs. Garth paused in her rocking and ceased to moan.

“Who ever is it?” whispered Garth.

“Let them stay where they are, whoever it be,” his mother mumbled, never shifting from her seat.  The knock came again.

“Nay, mother, nay; it is too late to—­”

He had said no more when the latch was lifted, and Rotha Stagg walked into the room.

“I’ve come to help to nurse you, if you please,” she said, addressing the sick man.

Garth looked steadily at her for a moment, every feature quivering.  Shame, fear, horror—­any sentiment but welcome—­was written on his face.  Then he straggled to twist his poor helpless body away; his head, at least, he turned from her to the wall.