“Ay, I know.”
“What would you do for a silver piece, Neil, my man?”
“You have none to give me, Sheen Macarthur; and, if you had, it would not be taking it I would.”
“Would you kiss a dead man for a crown-piece—a crown-piece of five good shillings?”
Neil Ross stared. Then he sprang to his feet.
“It is Adam Blair you are meaning, woman! God curse him in death now that he is no longer in life!”
Then, shaking and trembling, he sat down again, and brooded against the dull red glow of the peats.
But, when he rose, in the last quarter before noon, his face was white.
“The dead are dead, Sheen Macarthur. They can know or do nothing. I will do it. It is willed. Yes, I am going up to the house there. And now I am going from here. God Himself has my thanks to you, and my blessing too. They will come back to you. It is not forgetting you I will be. Good-bye.”