He rose to his feet and stared down.
"You take it wildly, same as I did," remarked the elder. "When my wife died, 'twas all three strong men could do to tear me off her. And when the two old women comed to do what was right, I nearly knocked their grey heads together, for I said, in my mad way, what business had them to live to grey hairs and my wife die afore a lock was touched by time? Brown her hair--pale brown to the end. Let me help you. She'm water-logged--poor blessed creature."
Margaret Bowden was brought to her little parlour and laid upon the sofa.
David said nothing; Shillabeer maundered on.
"Like a dog on a grave you'll be, my poor David. And time's self will find it hard to travel against your heart. You'll dare him to push on. I know--I know. And to think that I'd have been back with her--my own wife--but for this. Ess fay! Crazywell would have me if it hadn't had she. But you mustn't speak about that. One be taken and t'other left."
"She killed herself!" burst out the other man suddenly. "Mark me--this was no accident. She took her own life--and to think that I was there calling to her and she past hearing by then."
"Yes, she went her way. She knowed, I suppose--but what did she know? Weren't she useful no more? 'Tis only failure of usefulness allows this deed."
"Useful! What have I done? God knows what I've done. 'Tisn't me--'tisn't me, I tell you--there's nought between us and never was--nought but faithful love. There's another have done it--some other--and I shall never know--and her dead. Is she dead? Maybe there's a flicker in her yet, if we only knowed what to do."
"Don't distress yourself," said Shillabeer; "only Christ could raise her from the dead. I know death. She was lying like a woman asleep under the water. She's dead enough, and as a thinking man who knows trouble very close, I'll tell you for why. 'Tis along of' being childless--all because she had no child."
"What folly and wickedness to think so! If I didn't mind--why should she?"