Willy carried a cloak over his arm.  He was throwing it across Rotha’s unprotected shoulders.

“No, no,” she said, “you need it yourself.  I shall be back in a minute.”

And she was gone almost before he was aware.

Willy was turning away when he heard a step behind.  It was the Reverend Nicholas Stevens, lantern in hand, lighting himself home from a coming-of-age celebration at Smeathwaite.  As he approached, Willy stepped up to him.

“Stop,” cried the parson, “was she who parted from you but now the daughter of the man Simeon Stagg?”

“The same,” Willy answered.

“And she comes from the home of the infected blacksmith?”

“She is there again, even now,” said Willy.  “I thought you might wish to take the solace of religion to a dying man—­Garth is dying.”

“Back—­away—­do not touch me—­let me pass,” whispered the parson in an accent of dread, shrinking meantime from the murderous stab of the cloak which Willy carried over his arm.

Rotha was in the cottage once again almost before she had been missed.

Joe was dozing fitfully.  His mother was sighing and whimpering in turns.  Her wrinkled face, no longer rigid, was a distressing spectacle.  When Rotha came close to her she whispered,—­

“The lad was wrang, but I dare not have telt ’im so.  Yon man were none of a father to Joe, though he were my husband, mair’s the pity.”

Then getting up, glancing nervously at her son, lifting a knife from the table, creeping to the side of the bed and ripping a hole in the ticking, she drew out a soiled and crumpled paper.

“Look you, lass, I took this frae the man’s trunk when he lodged wi’ yer father and yersel’ at Fornside.”

It was a copy of the register of Joe’s birth, showing that he was the son of a father unknown.

“I knew he must have it.  He always threatened that he’d get it.  He wad have made mischief wi’ it somehow.”

Mrs. Garth spoke in whispers, but her voice broke her son’s restless sleep.  Garth was sinking fast, but he looked quieter when his eyes opened again.  “I think God has forgiven me my great crime,” he said calmly, “for the sake of the merciful Saviour, who would not condemn the woman that was a sinner.”

Then he crooned over the Quaker hymn,—­

     Though your sins be red as scarlet,
       He shall wash them white as wool.

Infinitely touching was it to hear his poor, feeble, broken voice spend its last strength so.

“Sing to me, Rotha,” he said, pausing for breath.

“Yes, Joe.  What shall I sing?”

“Sing ‘O Lord, my God,’” he answered.  And then, over the murmuring voice of the river, above the low wail of the rising wind, the girl’s sweet, solemn voice, deep with tenderness and tears, sang the simple old hymn,—­

     O Lord, my God,
       A broken heart
       Is all my part: 
     Spare not Thy rod,
       That I may prove
       Therein Thy love.