‘He’ll noane come to-night,’ said Phoebe, who had been as eager a listener as Hester, however.  ’Thou’d best go thy ways home; a shall stay up, for it’s not seemly for us a’ t’ go to our beds, an’ a corpse in t’ house; an’ Nancy, as might ha’ watched, is gone to her bed this hour past, like a lazy boots as she is.  A can hear, too, if t’ measter does come home; tho’ a’ll be bound he wunnot; choose wheere he is, he’ll be i’ bed by now, for it’s well on to eleven.  I’ll let thee out by t’ shop-door, and stand by it till thou’s close at home, for it’s ill for a young woman to be i’ t’ street so late.’

So she held the door open, and shaded the candle from the flickering outer air, while Hester went to her home with a heavy heart.

Heavily and hopelessly did they all meet in the morning.  No news of Philip, no change in Sylvia; an unceasing flow of angling and conjecture and gossip radiating from the shop into the town.

Hester could have entreated Coulson on her knees to cease from repeating the details of a story of which every word touched on a raw place in her sensitive heart; moreover, when they talked together so eagerly, she could not hear the coming footsteps on the pavement without.

Once some one hit very near the truth in a chance remark.

‘It seems strange,’ she said, ’how as one man turns up, another just disappears.  Why, it were but upo’ Tuesday as Kinraid come back, as all his own folk had thought to be dead; and next day here’s Measter Hepburn as is gone no one knows wheere!’

‘That’s t’ way i’ this world,’ replied Coulson, a little sententiously.  ‘This life is full o’ changes o’ one kind or another; them that’s dead is alive; and as for poor Philip, though he was alive, he looked fitter to be dead when he came into t’ shop o’ Wednesday morning.’

‘And how does she take it?’ nodding to where Sylvia was supposed to be.

’Oh! she’s not herself, so to say.  She were just stunned by finding her mother was dying in her very arms when she thought as she were only sleeping; yet she’s never been able to cry a drop; so that t’ sorrow’s gone inwards on her brain, and from all I can hear, she doesn’t rightly understand as her husband is missing.  T’ doctor says if she could but cry, she’d come to a juster comprehension of things.’

‘And what do John and Jeremiah Foster say to it all?’

‘They’re down here many a time in t’ day to ask if he’s come back, or how she is; for they made a deal on ’em both.  They’re going t’ attend t’ funeral to-morrow, and have given orders as t’ shop is to be shut up in t’ morning.’

To the surprise of every one, Sylvia, who had never left her room since the night of her mother’s death, and was supposed to be almost unconscious of all that was going on in the house, declared her intention of following her mother to the grave.  No one could do more than remonstrate:  no one had sufficient authority to interfere with her.  Dr Morgan even thought that she might possibly be roused to tears by the occasion; only he begged Hester to go with her, that she might have the solace of some woman’s company.