“Ess, awften an’ awften I did.  It comed an’ went, an’ comed an’ went again, like winter frosts.  True as I’m living it comed an’ went like that.”

Thus he spoke, half incoherently, his voice all blurred and vague with sleep.

“You awnly think ’t was so.  You’d never have sat down under it else.  It ban’t meant you should give yourself up now, anyways.  God would have sent the sojers to find ’e when you runned away if He’d wanted ’em to find ’e.  You didn’t hide.  You looked the world in the faace bold as a lion, didn’t ‘e?  Coourse you did; an’ ’t is gwaine against God’s will an’ wish for you to give yourself up now.  So you mustn’t speak an’ you must tell no one—­not even faither.  I was wrong to ax ’e to tell him.  Nobody at all must knaw.  Be dumb, an’ trust me to be dumb.  ’T is buried an’ forgot.  I’ll fight for ’e, my dearie, same as you’ve fought for me many a time; an’ ’t will all fall out right for ’e, for men ’s come through worse passes than this wi’ fewer friends than what you’ve got.”

She stopped to win breath and, in the silence, heard Will’s regular respiration and knew that he slept.  How much he had heard of her speech Phoebe could not say, but she felt glad to think that some hours at least of rest and peace now awaited him.  For herself she had never been more widely awake, and her brains were very busy through the hours of darkness.  A hundred thoughts and schemes presented themselves.  She gradually eliminated everybody from the main issue but Will, John Grimbal, and herself; and, pursuing the argument, began to suspect that she alone had power to right the wrong.  In one direction only could such an opinion lead—­a direction tremendous to her.  Yet she did not shrink from the necessity ahead; she strung herself up to face it; she longed for an opportunity and resolved to make one at the earliest moment.

Now that night was the longest in the whole year; and yet to Phoebe it passed with magic celerity.

Will awakened about half-past five, rose immediately according to his custom, lighted a candle, and started to dress himself.  He began the day in splendid spirits, begotten of good sleep and good health; but his wife saw the lightness of heart, the bustling activity of body, sink into apathy and inertia as remembrance overtook his wakening hour.  It was like a brief and splendid dawn crushed by storm-clouds at the very rise of the sun.

Phoebe presently dressed her little daughter and, as soon as the child had gone down-stairs, Will resumed the problems of his position.

“I be in two minds this marnin’,” he said.  “I’ve a thought to tell mother of this matter.  She ’m that wise, I’ve knawed her put me on the right track ‘fore now, an’ never guess she’d done it.  Not but what I allus awn up to taking advice, if I follow it, an’ no man ’s readier to profit by the wisdom of his betters than me.  That’s how I’ve done all I have done in my time.  T’ other thought was to take your counsel an’ see Miller ’pon it.”