Once she stirred in her sleep. “David, dreams cannot last,” she murmured. “You know they cannot. David, come home again to Garth!”
Then afterwards she dreamed quiet thoughts of Reuben; and they were wandering up the streamway that led to Keta’s Well.
CHAPTER XX
AT ten of the next morning Widow Mathewson crept down the stairway at Ghyll Farm. Gaunt had snatched what sleep he could on the settle in the living-room.
“You’re needed, Reuben,” she said, touching him on the shoulder.
He was on his feet at once; and to the widow it was restful to find a man who answered so quickly to the call of need.
“Well?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.
“She’s all but gone. I thought, like, ye might care—”
He went up the stair and she followed him. Gaunt, in days past, had needed the whip across his back; he found it now. There was no lifting of Peggy’s eyes to his, no word to bridge the passage. He took her hands in his, but they were dumb. There was a stifled breath, as of one who seeks for air in an overcrowded room and that was all. Peggy o’ Mathewson’s had gone out along the black, hot fever-road.
The widow looked at Gaunt, and pushed him gently from the room. “Poor lad,” was all she said. “’Tis one more trouble added to the peck for me—but ye’re not used to it.”