“It must have been the old birds in those trees, after all, Johnny,” said he, as we went up to bed. “I think the moon makes people fanciful.”
And after a sound night’s rest we woke up to the bright sunshine, and thought no more of the cries.
That morning, being close to Pitchley’s Farm, we called in to see Mrs. Frank Radcliffe. But she was not to be seen. Her brother, David Skate, just come in to his mid-day dinner, came forward to meet us in his fustian suit. Annet had been hardly able to keep about for some time, he said, but this was the first day she had regularly broken down so as to be in bed.
“It has brought on a touch of fever,” said he, pressing the bread-and-cheese and cider upon us, which he had ordered in.
“What has?” asked Tod.
“This perpetual torment that she keeps her mind in. But she can’t help it, poor thing, so it’s not fair to blame her,” added David Skate. “It grows worse instead of better, and I don’t see what the end of it is to be. I’ve thought for some time she might go and break up to-day.”
“Why to-day?”
“Because it is the anniversary of her husband’s death, Master Johnny. He died twelve months ago to-day.”
Back went my memory to the morning we heard of it. When the pater was scolding Dwarf Giles in the yard, and Tod stood laughing at the young ducks taking to the water, and Stephen Radcliffe loomed into sight, grim and surly, to disclose to us the tidings that the post had brought in—his brother Frank’s death.
“Has she still that curious fancy in her, David?—that he did not come by his death fairly.”