He found the cottage in the glen road near the village, and his knock was answered by Jen herself.  She recognised him instantly, but was too pre-occupied to take much interest in the fact of his coming.  He learned that her mother had just died, and that the neighbours were in the house, keeping vigil during the few sad days preceding the burial.  It was evident that there was little real sympathy between them and the bereaved daughter, so he easily persuaded her to come out and walk a bit up the road with him.  She did so, evidently supposing that he had some business with her, but too deeply buried in her sorrow to inquire what it was.

They came to the house by the roadside where he had last seen her and she had been unconscious of his presence.  The place seemed to rouse her from the dulness of grief, and she suddenly raised her head, like a beautiful animal scenting some cause of excitement, and stood still, looking round with brightened eyes, taking long deep breaths in the pure frosty air.  No doubt she had passed the same road many times since the tryst, but the mind which has lately stood face to face with death perceives more clearly the true relations of all things to itself; and, in this spot, among all life’s shiftings of the things that seem and are not, she had stood and wrestled with the reality of her ghostly bondage.

All about them the hills were covered with the year’s first snow.  How bright the light was upon their heights! how soft the shadows that gathered in their slopes!  The fields were white also, and the hedgerows.  Above them the sky was veiled with snow clouds, soft and grey, except that at the verge of east and west there were faint metallic lines, such as one sees upon clouds across snowfields, like the pale reflections of a distant fire.  Jen had come to a full stop now.  She raised her hands to her face and sobbed out like a little child.

Skelton stood by her, feeling his own feebleness.  ’I know you are in great trouble,’ he said.

Her sobs did not last long; she soon mastered them, not by any art of concealment but by rude force.  Then standing shame-faced, with half-averted head, she wiped her eyes with her apron.

’Yes, sir, I’m in great trouble, greater ner ye can know, fur death’s neither here nor there—­it’s living that’s hard.  Parson, he speaks out about preparing to die, but to my mind it takes a sight more preparing to know how to go on living.’

’I know that you have greater trouble than your mother’s death.  I know that you love a young man who loves you, and also what it is that you think keeps you apart from him.’

‘And how do you know that, sir?’ she asked, still with averted face.

Then he confessed, humbly enough, just how he did know it, and all that he knew, and told her about his visit to Yarm.  When he spoke of Yarm and his visit to Daniel McGair she turned and looked full at him, drinking in every word with hungry curiosity.