What was going on in those fearful pauses?  Could they not tell him how Miriam was?  Was he not her husband, and had he not a right to know of her who was his own?  By what right did the women—­good and kind though they were—­step in between himself and her whom he loved dearer than life?  And as these questions pressed him he rose to climb the stairway and claim a share in ministering to the sufferings of the one who was his own.  But when he reached the foot he paused, his nerve forsook him, and he trembled like a leaf beneath the breeze.  Straining his ear, he listened, but no sound came save a coaxing and encouraging word from the old nurse, or a brief note of instruction from Dr. Hale.  Should he call her by her name?  Should he address her as Merry, the pet name which he only addressed to her?  He opened his lips, but his tongue lay heavy.  He could scarcely move it, and as he moved it in his attempt to speak, he heard its sound as it parted from, or came in contact with, the dry walls of his mouth.  How long he could have borne this suspense it would be hard to say, had he not heard his mother’s voice at the kitchen-door calling.

‘Is that yo’, mother?’ said Matt, dragging himself from the foot of the stairway leading to the chamber above.  ‘Is that yo’?’

‘Ey, Matt, whatever’s to do wi’ thee; aw never see thee look like that afore.  Is Miriam bad, or summat?’

‘Nay, mother, they willn’t tell me.  But go yo’ upstairs, and when you’ve sin for yorsel come daan and tell me.’

Old Deborah took her son’s advice, and went upstairs to where the suffering woman lay pale and prostrate.  She saw, by a glance at the doctor’s face, that he was more than anxious, while the mute signs of the nurse and Malachi o’ th’ Mount’s wife confirmed her worst suspicions.

During his mother’s absence there returned on Matt the horrible suspense which her visit had in part enabled him to throw off.  Once more he felt the pressure of the silence, and the room in which he sat became haunted with a terrible vacancy—­a vacancy cold and shadowy with an unrelieved gloom.  There all round him were the familiar household gods; there they stood in their appointed places, but where was the hand that ruled them, the deity that gave grace to that domestic kingdom of the moors?  He looked for the shadow of her form as it was wont to fall on the hearth, but there was only a blank.  He lent his ear to catch the voice so often raised in merry snatch of song, but not the echo of a sound greeted him.  There was a room only, swept and garnished, but empty.  Then he thought of the great drama of life which was being enacted in the chamber overhead, and he asked himself why the hours were so many and why they walked with such leaden feet.  There was she, his Merry, torn between the forces of life and death, giving of her own that she might perpetuate life, and braving death that life might be its lord—­there was she, fighting alone! save for the feeble help of science and the cheer and succour of kindly care, while he, strong man that he was, sat there, powerless, his very impotence mocking him, and his groans and anguish but the climax of his despair.