Peering curiously in he saw a dismantled little room, dark, save for the shafts of light which pierced their way through the chinks of the shutters and down the chimney to the fireless grate, and dismantled, save for a clumsy old oak settle which stood near the hearth. But to his surprise Lizzie uttered a cry of rapture, and tottered forward into the room.
“I knowed I’d find ye waitin’!” she exclaimed.
* * *
“I think I’d best look in again on my way back,” said Jim, as he clambered into his cart again after depositing his load at the keeper’s. “I’d no notion the old body was so childish as that. I never thought someway she’d rid house altogether—”
“Oh, she’ve shifted for good,” interrupted Keeper Foster. “Her darter came and carried her off, and none too soon either. There’d ha’ been some mischance so sure as anything.”
“Well, I thought it a bit queer to find her out on the road so early. She’d had a tumble too, mind ye, one side of her face was all bruised. But ’twasn’t till I heerd her call out, ‘I knowed I’d find ye waitin’,’ in the empty room, that I knowed for certain she’d gone silly.”
“You must take her home—along wi’ ye,” said the keeper. “It’s not safe to leave her, and Mrs Caines ’ll be in an awful state. Here, I’ll come with ye, and we’ll persuade her between us.”
He got into the cart too, and they drove together to Lizzie’s cottage. The door stood open as before, and the room was very still. Lizzie was crouching in a corner of the settle, with her hands outstretched, and a smile upon her face. In the green wood without the boughs were waving, and the birds were singing. “Lwonesome Lizzie” was lonesome no more: she had found Friend Death waiting for her in the deserted house, in the guise of the husband of her youth.
JESS DOMENY ON STRIKE
The hay in Farmer Old’s biggest field had been duly mown and tossed, and his whole staff were now employed in carrying it. But the day was intensely hot, with a brooding sultriness which seemed to betoken a coming storm. Dust lay thick upon the hedges, and the ground was iron hard; rain was badly needed, no doubt, but Farmer Old devoutly hoped it would hold off just a little longer until the crop was saved. He was a wonderfully energetic man, was Farmer Old, and spared himself as little as those who worked under him. All the long, glowing hours of that languorous day he had toiled as manfully as any of his labourers; but now, at length, he had left them to their own devices for a short time, and the men breathed more freely in consequence. The rattle of the hay-rake ceased as the driver, having reached the corner of the field, paused to wipe his brow before turning the horses. A little knot of men, deputed by the farmer to ensure against any possible waste by following in its wake with the humble wooden implements in vogue before its invention, insensibly drew nearer together. One of their number expressed the natural longing for a drop of beer, and another incautiously provoked envious feelings by announcing that at Farmer Inkpen’s the men had as much beer allowed them as they could drink at busy times.