They stopped at the gate to bid each other a maudlin farewell.
Michael stooped forward to catch the latch with the hook of the stick
which he carried; he dropped the stick, and it fell with one end
close to Susan,--indeed, with the slightest change of posture she
could have opened the gate for him. He swore a great oath, and
struck his horse with his closed fist, as if that animal had been to
blame; then he dismounted, opened the gate, and fumbled about for his
stick. When he had found it (Susan had touched the other end) his
first use of it was to flog his horse well, and she had much ado to
avoid its kicks and plunges. Then, still swearing, he staggered up
the lane, for it was evident he was not sober enough to remount.

By daylight Susan was back and at her daily labours at Yew Nook.
When the spring came, Michael Hurst was married to Eleanor
Hebthwaite. Others, too, were married, and christenings made their
firesides merry and glad; or they travelled, and came back after long
years with many wondrous tales. More rarely, perhaps, a Dalesman
changed his dwelling. But to all households more change came than to
Yew Nook. There the seasons came round with monotonous sameness; or,
if they brought mutation, it was of a slow, and decaying, and
depressing kind. Old Peggy died. Her silent sympathy, concealed
under much roughness, was a loss to Susan Dixon. Susan was not yet
thirty when this happened, but she looked a middle-aged, not to say
an elderly woman. People affirmed that she had never recovered her
complexion since that fever, a dozen years ago, which killed her
father, and left Will Dixon an idiot. But besides her gray
sallowness, the lines in her face were strong, and deep, and hard.
The movements of her eyeballs were slow and heavy; the wrinkles at
the corners of her mouth and eyes were planted firm and sure; not an
ounce of unnecessary flesh was there on her bones--every muscle