"No, you do it. Alexander, it'll mean a lot to him."
"I don't believe it, unless getting rid of me's a lot."
"You're hard, Alec. In all his life he's had no success but this of yours, and he'll be pleased. You don't know how much—how much he cares for you."
"Oh, that——" he said, and paused in his walk to the door. "How will you do without me? Winter coming on, and—he gets worse."
"He takes less," she said sharply.
"He'll take longer dying," was his thought, but he said, "Sometimes. But he's more restless. He's not responsible. I believe he's possessed." Again he thought of Janet and of the dead witch.
"Don't say such things! Possessed, indeed! He's not responsible; but why, poor soul? Because his father was a bad old man. He can't help himself. It's wicked the way a man's vice can come crawling after his son. Wicked! It turns me from my prayers sometimes."
"There's a bad chance for me. You'll never have thought of that, perhaps."
"I'm your mother as well as his wife, my lad; but you're strong, Alec. I've given you my strength. And he's weak. But for all that he's the one man in the world for me, so mind what you say of him! He's the one man. You'll know some day. Why, if I saw him doing murder, I'd just wipe the blood off his poor hands." She ended, and then, hearing the echo of her own words, she looked at him with an approach to shyness. "You think I'm mad."
"No, I think you're wonderful. You're—you're grand," he stammered.