that supper was ready. Then the two went in.



CHAPTER II.



Susan and Michael were to be married in April. He had already gone
to take possession of his new farm, three or four miles away from Yew
Nook--but that is neighbouring, according to the acceptation of the
word in that thinly-populated district,--when William Dixon fell ill.
He came home one evening, complaining of head-ache and pains in his
limbs, but seemed to loathe the posset which Susan prepared for him;
the treacle-posset which was the homely country remedy against an
incipient cold. He took to his bed with a sensation of exceeding
weariness, and an odd, unusual looking-back to the days of his youth,
when he was a lad living with his parents, in this very house.

The next morning he had forgotten all his life since then, and did
not know his own children; crying, like a newly-weaned baby, for his
mother to come and soothe away his terrible pain. The doctor from
Coniston said it was the typhus-fever, and warned Susan of its
infectious character, and shook his head over his patient. There
were no near friends to come and share her anxiety; only good, kind
old Peggy, who was faithfulness itself, and one or two labourers'
wives, who would fain have helped her, had not their hands been tied
by their responsibility to their own families. But, somehow, Susan
neither feared nor flagged. As for fear, indeed, she had no time to
give way to it, for every energy of both body and mind was required.