was
ourselves, and they knew it."

"Oh, Phoebe!--but _we_ knew it too! I had no chance to dream how we
showed them the Church and the crypt, for I woke up. Ah, but 'tis long
ago now!--sixty-two--sixty-three years! I wonder, is the stack of bones
in the crypt now that was then? There was a big skull that measured
twenty-seven inches."

"That it was! Twenty-seven. Now, to think of us young creatures handling
those old bones!"

"Then it was not long but they came again on their horses, and this time
it was that their father the Squire would see father righted in his
lawsuit about the upper waters of the millstream. That was how Thornton
made a friend of father. And then it was we played them our trick, to
say which was which. We changed our frocks, and they were none the
wiser."

A recollection stirred in old Phoebe's mind, that could almost bring a
smile to her lips, even now. "Ralph never was any the wiser. He went
away to the Indies, and died there.... But not afore he told to my
husband how Thornton came to tell us apart.... How did he? Why, darling,
'twas the way you would give him all your hand, and I stinted him of
mine."

"You never loved him, Phoebe."

"Was I not in the right of it, Maisie?" She then felt the words were
hasty, and would have been glad to recall them. She waited for an
answer, but none came. The fire was all but out, and the morning chill
was in the air. She rose from the bedside and crossed the room to help
it from extinction. But she felt very shaky on her feet.

A little rearrangement convinced the fire that it had been premature;
and an outlying faggot, brought into hotchpot, decided as an
after-thought that it could flare. "I am coming back," said Granny
Marrable. She was afraid her sister would think she was going to be left
alone. But there was no need, for when she reached her chair again--and
she was glad to do so--old Maisie was just as she had left her, quite
tranquil and seeming collected, but with her eyes open, watching the
welcome light of the new flicker. One strange thing in this interview
was that her weakness seemed better able to endure the strain of the
position than her sister's strength.

She picked up the thread of the conversation where that interlude of the
fire had left it. "You never loved Thornton, Phoebe dearest. But he was
mine, for my love. He was kind and good to me, all those days out there
in the bush, till I lost him. He was a lawbreaker, I know, but h