"Then it is true he's gone away?" said the old woman.
Maud nodded. The tears were in her eyes now. "We don't know where he has gone," she said.
"Poor lamb, it is a sore trial for you; but it will be worse for me, I trow," and the old woman sighed heavily.
"Why?" asked Maud, entering the cottage, where, on a little table lay a Bible open at the Gospel of St. John. There was nothing remarkable in this book, she knew, for she recognised it as an old one of Harry's, which they had read from together many times, until she gave him a new one on his birthday once, when the old one disappeared.
After she had read part of the sixth chapter, the old woman begged for a few verses more about the "mansions," and Maud read part of the fourteenth.
"I'll keep that in mind when the time comes," murmured the old woman; "and if I never see you again, Mistress Harcourt——"
"But I will come and see you again," interrupted Maud.
The old woman shook her head. "It'll be all over soon; I couldn't bear it again," she said.
"What will be all over?" asked Maud. "You are not ill, are—at least, not very ill—not likely to die yet," she added, hastily.
"If I waited till the Lord called me by disease I'd may be wait a good while yet, for I'm strong when I'm well; but the people hereabout say I am a witch, and but for Master Harry I should have been tried before last night."