would sally out to taste the fresh air, and to work off her wild
sorrow in cries and mutterings to herself. The early labourers saw
her gestures at a distance, and thought her as crazed as the idiot-
brother who made the neighbourhood a haunted place. But did any
chance person call at Yew Nook later on in the day, he would find
Susan Dixon cold, calm, collected; her manner curt, her wits keen.

Once this fit of violence lasted longer than usual. Susan's strength
both of mind and body was nearly worn out; she wrestled in prayer
that somehow it might end before she, too, was driven mad; or, worse,
might be obliged to give up life's aim, and consign Willie to a
madhouse. From that moment of prayer (as she afterwards
superstitiously thought) Willie calmed--and then he drooped--and then
he sank--and, last of all, he died in reality from physical
exhaustion.

But he was so gentle and tender as he lay on his dying bed; such
strange, child-like gleams of returning intelligence came over his
face, long after the power to make his dull, inarticulate sounds had
departed, that Susan was attracted to him by a stronger tie than she
had ever felt before. It was something to have even an idiot loving
her with dumb, wistful, animal affection; something to have any
creature looking at her with such beseeching eyes, imploring
protection from the insidious enemy stealing on. And yet she knew
that to him death was no enemy, but a true friend, restoring light
and health to his poor clouded mind. It was to her that death was an
enemy; to her, the survivor, when Willie died; there was no one to
love her.

Worse doom still, there was no one left on earth for her to love.