“An’ you will do it—if Sim don’t,” he prophesied.
Within an hour Daniel reluctantly prepared to leave his home.
“’Tis a damned shame I must go,” he said; “but I’ve no choice now. Only mind this, Minnie Sweetland. Don’t you think you’m a widow to-morrow when they comes an’ tells you so. If they bring my carpse to ’e, then believe it; but they won’t.”
“Take care of yourself, Daniel,” she answered, “for your life’s my life. I’ll only live an’ think an’ work an’ pray for you, till you come homealong again.”
“Trust me,” he said. “You’m my star wheresoever I do go. Up or down, so long as I be alive, I’ll have you first in thought, my own li’l wife. Nought shall ever come atween me an’ you but my coffin-lid. An’ well God knows it.”
“Go,” she said. “An’ let me hear how you be faring so soon as you can.”
“Be sure of that. If I daren’t write to you, I’ll write to Sim. But remember! it may be an awful long time, if I have to go across seas.”
“Write to me—to me direct,” she begged earnestly. “Send my letter through no other man or woman. ’Twill be my life’s blood renewed to get it. An’ I can wait; I can wait as patient as any stone. Time’s nothing so long as we come together again some day. We’ve got our dear memories, an’ they’ll never grow dim, though we grow grey.”
“Not the memory of this day an’ night, that’s brought the greatest ill an’ the greatest joy into my life to once,” he answered her. “Green for evermore ’twill be.”