’The Lord is like a tender nurse as weans a child to look on and to like what it lothed once.  He has sent me dreams as has prepared me for this, if so be it comes to pass.

‘Philip is hopeful,’ said Sylvia, raising her head and looking through her tears at her mother.

’Ay, he is.  And I cannot tell, but I think it’s not for nought as the Lord has ta’en away all fear o’ death out o’ my heart.  I think He means as Daniel and me is to go hand-in-hand through the valley—­like as we walked up to our wedding in Crosthwaite Church.  I could never guide th’ house without Daniel, and I should be feared he’d take a deal more nor is good for him without me.’

‘But me, mother, thou’s forgetting me,’ moaned out Sylvia.  ’Oh, mother, mother, think on me!’

‘Nay, my lass, I’m noane forgetting yo’.  I’d a sore heart a’ last winter a-thinking on thee, when that chap Kinraid were hanging about thee.  I’ll noane speak ill on the dead, but I were uneasylike.  But sin’ Philip and thee seem to ha’ made it up——­’

Sylvia shivered, and opened her mouth to speak, but did not say a word.

‘And sin’ the Lord has been comforting me, and talking to me many a time when thou’s thought I were asleep, things has seemed to redd theirselves up, and if Daniel goes, I’m ready to follow.  I could niver stand living to hear folks say he’d been hung; it seems so unnatural and shameful.’

‘But, mother, he won’t!—­he shan’t be hung!’ said Sylvia, springing to her feet.  ‘Philip says he won’t.’

Bell shook her head.  They walked on, Sylvia both disheartened and almost irritated at her mother’s despondency.  But before they went to bed at night Bell said things which seemed as though the morning’s feelings had been but temporary, and as if she was referring every decision to the period of her husband’s return.  ‘When father comes home,’ seemed a sort of burden at the beginning or end of every sentence, and this reliance on his certain coming back to them was almost as great a trial to Sylvia as the absence of all hope had been in the morning.  But that instinct told her that her mother was becoming incapable of argument, she would have asked her why her views were so essentially changed in so few hours.  This inability of reason in poor Bell made Sylvia feel very desolate.

Monday passed over—­how, neither of them knew, for neither spoke of what was filling the thoughts of both.  Before it was light on Tuesday morning, Bell was astir.

‘It’s very early, mother,’ said weary, sleepy Sylvia, dreading returning consciousness.

‘Ay, lass!’ said Bell, in a brisk, cheerful tone; ’but he’ll, maybe, be home to-night, and I’se bound to have all things ready for him.’

‘Anyhow,’ said Sylvia, sitting up in bed, ’he couldn’t come home to-night.’

’Tut, lass! thou doesn’t know how quick a man comes home to wife and child.  I’ll be a’ ready at any rate.’