Up the crooked stair, worn by a half-score generations, passed Nell Wayne, with her brave carriage and her pitiless face. The Sexton's wife dropped a stitch of her knitting as she heard the door open; and her heart went pit-a-pat, for it was a fit night for ghosts.
"Oh, 'tis ye, Mistress, is't?" she grumbled, soon as she saw it was no ghost at all, but just Nell Wayne of Marsh.
The girl looked at her awhile in silence, as if the crabbed figure, working busily with hand and foot by the light of a rush candle, were dear to her at such a time.
"Well, then, what hes brought ye through th' storm?" said the little woman. "I warrant 'tis easier to lig between sheets nor to cross th' moor to-neet."
"There's no ease, Nanny, save in fighting the storm," cried the girl. "Could I rest quiet at Marsh House, think'st thou, knowing what lies there?"
"Nay, for th' wind rapped hard at th' windows an' called ye out; ye war iver th' storm's bairn," said Nanny, chuckling grimly.
"I came to ask thee to give father a longer passing than his wife is like to have seen to. Here is my purse, Nanny—take what thou wilt so long as his soul is cared for."
Ay, there was heart in the Sexton's wife, for all her rough pilgrimage through life. She knew, now for the first time, how deep her love went for this daughter of the Waynes; and even as she pushed away the money, with impatient protest, her voice broke and her eyes filled with tears.
"Dearie," she whispered, coming close to the girl's side and putting a lean arm about her. "Dearie, ye must not look like that. Ye're ower young to let all Hell creep into your face—ower young, I tell ye—an' I should know, seeing I nursed ye fro' being a two-year babby."
"Over young! Nay, a woman can never be over young to learn God's lesson, Nanny. 'Tis fight at our birth—poor woman's sort of struggle, with tears—and fight through the summer days when the very skies strive against the seed-crops that should keep our bodies quick—and fight again, when winter rails at the house walls, trying to batter them in."