enough, and if he
hasn't land he has some money, and is like to have more. I'll give
you a week to think of it, and if he ever comes and speaks for you
I'll ask you to give him his civil answer. You will be three and
twenty come Martinmas, and long before your mother was as old as that
she had a couple of your brothers to fend for."

"Some of my brothers are nearly twice my age, and you don't ask them
to marry," said Greeba.

"That's a different matter," said Mrs. Fairbrother.

It turned out that the week was more than enough to settle the
difference between Greeba and her mother, for in less time than that
Mrs. Fairbrother was stricken down by a mortal illness. It was only a
month since she had turned Adam from her door, but her time was
already at hand, and more than he predicted had come to pass. She had
grown old without knowing a day's illness; her body, like a rocky
headland that gives no sign of the seasons, had only grown harder
every year, with a face more deeply seamed; but when she fell it was
at one blow of life's ocean. Three little days she had lost appetite,
on the morning of the fourth day she had found a fever in a neglected
cattle trough that had drained into the well, and before night she
had taken her death-warrant.

She knew the worst, and faced it, but her terror was abject.
Sixty-five years she had scraped and scratched, but her time was
come. She had thought of nothing save her treasure, and there it lay,
yet it brought her no solace.

Two days she tossed in agony, remembering the past, and the price she
had paid, and made others to pay, for all that she had held so dear
and must leave so soon, for now it was nothing worth. Then she sent
for the parson, Parson Gell, who was still living, but very old. The
good man came, thinking his mission was spiritual comfort, but Mrs.
Fairbrother would hear nothing of that. As she had lived without God
in the world, even so did she intend to die. But some things that had
gone amiss with her in her eager race after riches she was minded to
set right before her time came to go. In lending she had charged too
high an interest; in paying she had withheld too much for money; in
seizing for mortgage she had given too little grace. So she would
repay before it was too late, for Death was opening her hands.

"Send for them all," she cried; "there's Kinvig of Ballagawne, and
Corlett's widow at Ballacreggan, and Quirk of Claughbane, and the
children of Joughan