The widow passed up through the croft and into the moor. The new moon, a sickle of silver-grey, lay over the rowan-tree. Mrs. Mathewson, from old habit, curtseyed to it seven times, not knowing that she did so. Then she sought the ghyll, and the stream that was too little and too dry to be heard at all if the faintest breeze had stirred about the heath.
Gaunt had wondered at the widow’s strength throughout the day. It was well that he did not see her in her weakness now. All restraint was gone, as she knelt by the grave that was not a day old as yet.
“Peggy, my lass! Peggy, ye’re all I have i’ this world. Reuben’s staunch, I know, an’ I’m fond o’ the lad, but ’tis ye I want—’tis ye.”
The weakness of the strong, when at last they are compelled to yield to it takes its own revenge. Mrs. Mathewson was bewildered, helpless. Then a blind fury seized her, and she cried out on God because He had robbed her, who had so little, of the one thing she prized. And then there came a darkness, a reaching-out for help, such as Gaunt had known not long ago at the gate of the croft.
After that a counterfeit of peace stole over her. She was on the borderland between this world and another, and she seemed to reach across and take the girl’s hands in her own.
“Ye’ve strayed, lile lass. Come away back wi’ me to Ghyll,” she said, grasping the new hope. “Ah, now, ye’d come—surely ye’d come if your old mother asked ye.”
Throughout the night she lay beside the grave, sleeping fitfully at times, but oftener lying awake, listening to the trickle of the stream and watching the Milky Way that streaked the sky with jewelled dust. For these few hours she had let weakness have its way with her; but, when the pink fingers of the dawn began to touch the hills, she rose. Old habit taught her that the day was meant for work. She was dizzy; her limbs trembled under her; grief had left her stricken in soul and body. She must conquer the trouble, that was all, as she had done at many a long-past dawn.
There had been no freshness, no movement of the breeze, through the night hours; but now the moor seemed to breathe at last, as a little wind got up and rustled lightly among the heather. Not the fingers only, but the broad hands of the dawn were on the hills. The pink lights had deepened into crimson, and stretched like beacon fires across the eastern moor. The grey darkness receded from the dingles. Out to the west, a sky of tenderest sapphire brushed the rough edges of the heath.
Widow Mathewson, again from habit, halted to look at the glory of her homeland. She scarcely knew that the well-known pageant was spread out before her; but she gathered heart again, and went bravely down to Ghyll. She walked with a man’s stride, a man’s straight back, and none would have guessed that she was a broken woman, asking no more than to keep her pride until the end.
Gaunt, too, was astir soon after dawn. He stepped out on tiptoe, glad that the widow slept so long, and fearing to awaken her. They met in the mistal-yard.