even, as of one whose talk
is merely a concession to good manners. There was the faintest
interrogation in it; no more.

After a minute or so, getting no reply, he added more querulously--

"I reckon you might answer, 'Lizabeth. Do 'ee think I've got to die?"

'Lizabeth, who stood by the uncurtained window, staring into the
blackness without, barely turned her head to answer--

"Certain."

"Doctor said so, did he?"

'Lizabeth, still with her back towards him, nodded. For a minute or two
there was silence.

"I don't feel like dyin'; but doctor ought to know. Seemed to me 'twas
harder, an'--an' more important. This sort o' dyin' don't seem o' much
account."

"No?"

"That's it. I reckon, though, 'twould be other if I had a family round
the bed. But there ain't none o' the boys left to stand by me now.
It's hard."

"What's hard?"

"Why, that two out o' the three should be called afore me. And hard is
the manner of it. It's hard that, after Samuel died o' fever, Jim shud
be blown up at Herodsfoot powder-mill. He made a lovely corpse, did
Samuel; but Jim, you see, he hadn't a chance. An' as for William, he's
never come home nor wrote a line since he joined the Thirty-Second; an'
it's little he cares for his home or his father. I reckoned, back
along, 'Lizabeth, as you an' he might come to an understandin'."

"William's naught to me."

"Look here!" cried the old man sharply; "he treated you bad, did
William."

"Who says so?"

"Why, all the folks. Lord bless the girl! do 'ee think folks use their
eyes without usin' their tongues? An' I wish it had come about, for
you'd ha' kept en straight. But he treated you bad, and he treated me
bad, tho' he won't find no profit o' that. You'm my sister's child,
'Lizabeth," he rambled on; "an' what house-room you've had you've fairly
earned--not but what you was welcome: an' if I thought as there was harm
done, I'd curse him 'pon my deathbed, I would."

"You be quiet!"

She turned from the window and cowed him with angry grey eyes.
Her figure was tall and meagre; her face that of a woman well over
thirty--once comely, but worn over-much, and prematurely hardened.
The voice had hardened with it, perhaps. The old man, who had risen on
his elbow in an access of passion, was taken with a fit of coughing, and
sank back upon the pillows.

"There's no call to be niffy," he apologised at last. "I was on'y
thinkin' of how you'd manage when I'm dead an' gone