Her voice was passionless and clear, and Wayne was growing more and more perplexed of late to know what lay beneath these sudden, wandering questions of his step-mother's.
"Ay, 'tis over," he said; "how should it be else? See how the leaves are greening, and tell me who would think of graves on such an April eve as this?"
"The leaves are greening? Nay, thou'rt jesting with me, they're reddening, like the sun up yonder—like the long wisp of sky that trails across the brink-field there. And the graves, too, are red—they keep opening, opening, and I dread to look for fear of what may come from them. Hold both my hands tight, Ned—it should have been my wedding-morn, and a great trouble came, and now I can see no green fields, nor trees, for the red mist that hugs them. Dear, thou'lt not leave me?"
"Nay, I'll not leave thee, little one," began Wayne, and turned as a footstep sounded close behind them.
Hiram Hey, crossing from the mistals, had caught sight of the Master and had stopped to ask for his orders touching the morrow's farm-work—orders which he received day by day with the same grudging, half-scornful air, in token that the new rule liked him little.
"Th' brink-field is sown, an' we're through wi' ploughing them lower fields. What's to be done next, Maister?" he asked with a side glance of curiosity at Mistress Wayne.
Wayne was not minded to think of farming-matters to-night; and Hiram, noting his mood, took a wry sort of pleasure in holding him to the topic.
"I thowt he'd get stalled afore so varry long," said the old man to himself. "Ay, he can't bide to think o' crops to-neet."
He began to rock with one foot the mossy ball that had lain so long under the right-hand pillar of the gateway; and the set of his body spoke of leisure and of obstinacy.
"Well?" he asked at last. "There's marrow i' what ye said to me a while back, Maister. Sleep ower th' next day's wark, an' ye go wi' a ready hand to it i' th' morn."