"'Tis little we poor folks has to do with heaven," she said.
"It's little you know," responded Jem Carter. "Wasn't it the poor, an' not the rich—somebody said. But I minds nothin' now. It's all gone. An' there's no one to say a word—an' I'm dyin'."
"Can't ye tell him what he wants?" sobbed Ailie.
"Can't nobody tell?"
"Can't nobody tell?" echoed the dry failing lips. "Mrs. Forsyth, can ye mind nothin' o' what I once heard?"
"I didn't know ye then," she said, with an effort to rack her memory for some dim recollection of the "sweet story of old," with which in childhood she had not been wholly unfamiliar. But it would not come. "There's nobody here as knows nothin'."
Nobody! Not one to bring a ray of light into the deep darkness of that poor benighted soul. Not one to hold the cup of life to those dying lips.
Awhile they kept silence, broken only by the deep breathing from the flock-bed. The old woman fidgeted about, and muttered to herself. Esther stood still, with the child clinging to her dress.
"He'll die easy now," she whispered encouragingly, and she hoped it might be so. But the closed eyes opened again, and wandered to and fro distressfully; and the word "Parson" was whispered more than once.
"An' where be we to find a parson?" the old woman demanded in her ignorance. "Likely a parson 'ud come to this hole, at this time o' night. Tell ye what, Mrs. Forsyth, if ye'll stay here a bit, I'll go an' settle off my old man, an' then come back an' stay, so as ye can go. 'Tain't fair to leave him alone like this, and ye'll have enough to do wi' your own six brats."