The year wore on to July, and there had been no rain since a light April shower that had followed the snowstorm. The pastures, striding stony limestone hills, grew parched and brown. With August, and no rain from the pitiless blue sky, even the brown of the grass was burnt, and the lightest of warm breezes carried the dust of the brown way. Far up the crests of the hills there was no green to soften the white glare of the limestone. All was pitiless and bare, and lacking any gift of charity. The sun, at usual times a rare and welcome guest, had overstepped his welcome now.
A rumour came to Garth these days, and the farmers, as they rode down the street to market, grew less cheery in their greetings one to another. They knew, each one of them, the danger that lay near to their wives and bairns; and, knowing it, they kept silence, as the way of the hills is when a tempest shakes them.
Their wives heard the rumour, by and by, and there was clatter of tongues along the dust of Garth’s grey street. Widow Lister, by gift of nature, talked more shrilly than her sisters, just as she had been the first to bring the news which no folk cared to hear.
“I telled ye so,” she whispered, running out to meet Hirst one day as he passed down the street. “The Black Fever has come nigh to Garth, and ye wouldn’t take no heed. I’m a lone widow myself, with no one to care for—”
“Oh, ay, but you have!” Hirst’s voice was cheery still, though it was less boisterous than usual, and behind it there was a hint of sharp reproof. “You’ve yourself to care for, Widow. That means a lot to ye.”
“Now, what do ye mean?”
“I mean this. That folk who have only theirselves to think on, they forget to think for others. See you here, Widow, the fever’s not reached Garth yet. ’Twill reach it sooner, I warrant ye, if you go scaring timid women as you’re scaring ’em each minute o’ the day.”
“Eh, now, I’m to be scolded, am I?” The widow brushed a few tears away, and looked up into Hirst’s face with the timidity which had always served her well. “To be sure, I’ve no man-body to speak up for me. I mun bear my crosses meekly, for nobody heeds you much once you’re lone and widowed.”
Hirst’s face, with all its jollity and kindliness, was lined deep by hardship, by fight in life’s open with such plain foes as weather, peevish soil, and foot-rot that attacked his sheep. The widow’s was rosy, plump, unmarked save by such little wrinkles as a baby carries; she had sat by the hearth all her days, sheltered by four walls, and death, when it had come to force her from the fireside warmth to the churchyard and her husband’s grave, had been no more than a worry which spoilt her own comfort for awhile. Yet the round, shining face, looking up into his, made Yeoman Hirst uneasy this morning; it put him in the wrong; it made him feel as if he had rebuked a kitten for playing with a ball of wool.
“Well, we’re made as we’re made, Widow!” he cried, preparing to move on. “I only ask you to listen when I tell ye what a power o’ harm ye can do by scaring folk when the fever’s close at our doors.”