“Get up an’ go to bed.  Doan’t whine, for God’s sake, or you’ll drive me daft.  I’ve paid afore, an’ I’ll pay again; an’ may the Lard help him who ever owes me ought.  No mercy have I ever had from living man,—­’cept Miller,—­none will I ever shaw.”

“Not to-morrow, Will—­not this week.  Promise that, an’ I’ll get into bed an’ bide quiet.  For your love o’ me, just leave it till arter Christmas time.  Promise that, else you’ll kill me.  No, no, no—­you shaa’n’t shout me down ’pon this.  I’ll cry to ’e while I’ve got life left.  Promise not till Christmas be past.”

“I’ll promise nothing.  I must think in the peace o’ night.  Go to sleep an ’bide quiet, else you’ll wake the li’l gal.”

“I won’t—­I won’t—­I’ll never sleep again.  Caan’ t’e think o’ me so well as yourself—­you as be allus thinking o’ me?  Ban’t I to count in an awful pass like this?  I’m no fair-weather wife, as you knaws by now.  If you gives yourself up, I’ll kill myself.  You think I couldn’t, but I could.  What’s my days away from you?”

“Hush, hush!” he said.  “Be you mad?  ’T is a matter tu small for such talk as that.”

“Promise, then, promise you’ll be dumb till arter Christmas.”

“So I will, if you ‘m that set on it; but if you knawed what waitin’ meant to the likes o’ me, you wouldn’t ax.  You’ve got my word, now keep quiet, theer ‘s a dear love, an’ dry your eyes.”

He put her into bed, and soon stretched himself beside her.  Then she clung to him as though powers were already dragging him away for ever.  Will, bored and weary, was sorry for his wife with all his soul, and kept grunting words of good cheer and comfort as he sank to sleep.  She still begged and prayed for delay, and by her importunity made him promise at last that he would take no step until after New Year’s Day.  Then, finding she could win no more in that direction, Phoebe turned to another aspect of the problem, and began to argue with unexpected if sophistic skill.  Her tears were now dry, her eyes very bright beneath the darkness; she talked and talked with feverish volubility, and her voice faded into a long-drawn murmur as Will’s hearing weakened on the verge of unconsciousness.

“Why for d’ you say you was wrong in what you done?  Why d’ you harp an’ harp ‘pon that, knawin’ right well you’d do the same again to-morrow?  You wasn’t wrong, an’ the Queen’s self would say the same if she knawed.  ‘T was to save a helpless woman you runned; an’ her—­Queen Victoria—­wi’ her big heart as can sigh for the sorrow of even such small folks as us—­she’d be the last to blame ’e.”

“She’ll never knaw nothin’ ’bout it, gude or bad.  They doan’t vex her ears wi’ trifles.  I deserted, an’ that’s a crime.”

“I say ‘t weern’t no such thing.  You had to choose between that an’ letting me die.  You saved my life; an’ the facts would be judged the same by any as was wife an’ mother, high or low.  God A’mighty ’s best an’ awnly judge how much you was wrong; an’ you knaw He doan’t blame ’e, else your heart would have been sore for it these years an’ years.  You never blamed yourself till now.”