“Within the very shadow of marriage, and you are frightened of me still!  Frightened to let me pick an apple over the orchard wall when I am going through the gate for my own the next moment!  Listen!  I hear our wedding bells!”

Only the little lizard and the hovering hawk with gold eyes saw them.

“Our wedding bells!” said Chris.

Towards set of sun Hicks saw his sweetheart to her mother’s cottage.  His ecstatic joys were sobered now, and his gratitude a little lessened.

“To think what marvels o’ happiness be in store for us, Clem, my awn!”

“Yes—­not more than we deserve, either.  God knows, if there ’s any justice, it was your turn and mine to come by a little of the happiness that falls to the lot of men and women.”

“I doan’t see how highest heaven’s gwaine to be better than our married life, so long as you love me.”

“Heaven!  Don’t compare them.  What’s eternity if you’re half a ghost, half a bird?  That’s the bribe thrown out,—­to be a cold-blooded, perfect thing, and passionless as a musical box.  Give me hot blood that flows and throbs; give me love, and a woman’s breast to lean on.  One great day on earth, such as this has been, is better than a million ages of sexless perfection in heaven.  A vain reward it was that Christ offered.  It seemed highest perfection to Him, doubtless; but He judged the world by Himself.  The Camel-driver was wiser.  He promised actual, healthy flesh in paradise—­flesh that should never know an ache or pain—­eternal flesh, and the joys of it.  We can understand that, but where’s the joy of being a spirit?  I cling to the flesh I have, for I know that Nature will very soon want back the dust she has lent me.”

CHAPTER XIII

THE WILL

Agreeably to the prediction of Doctor Parsons, Mrs. Lezzard’s journey was ended in less than three weeks of her conversation with Clement Hicks.  Then came a night when she made an ugly end; and with morning a group of gossips stood about the drawn blinds, licked their lips over the details, and generally derived that satisfaction from death common to their class.  Indeed, this ghoulish gusto is not restricted to humble folk alone.  The instinct lies somewhere at the root of human nature, together with many another morbid vein and trait not readily to be analysed or understood.  Only educated persons conceal it.

“She had deliriums just at the end,” said Martha, her maid.  “She called out in a voice as I never heard afore, an’ mistook her husband for the Dowl.”

“Poor sawl!  Death’s such a struggle at the finish for the full-blooded kind.  Doctor tawld me that if she’d had the leastest bit o’liver left, he could ‘a’ saved her; but ’twas all soaked up by neat brandy, leaving nought but a vacuum or some such fatal thing.”

“Her hadn’t the use of her innards for a full fortnight!  Think o’ that!  Aw. dallybuttons!  It do make me cream all awver to hear tell of!”