whether he obeyed her injunction or not.

Sometimes three or four years would pass over without her hearing
Michael Hurst's name mentioned. She used to wonder at such times
whether he were dead or alive. She would sit for hours by the dying
embers of her fire on a winter's evening, trying to recall the scenes
of her youth; trying to bring up living pictures of the faces she had
then known--Michael's most especially. She thought it was possible,
so long had been the lapse of years, that she might now pass by him
in the street unknowing and unknown. His outward form she might not
recognize, but himself she should feel in the thrill of her whole
being. He could not pass her unawares.

What little she did hear about him, all testified a downward
tendency. He drank--not at stated times when there was no other work
to be done, but continually, whether it was seed-time or harvest.
His children were all ill at the same time; then one died, while the
others recovered, but were poor sickly things. No one dared to give
Susan any direct intelligence of her former lover; many avoided all
mention of his name in her presence; but a few spoke out either in
indifference to, or ignorance of, those bygone days. Susan heard
every word, every whisper, every sound that related to him. But her
eye never changed, nor did a muscle of her face move.

Late one November night she sat over her fire; not a human being
besides herself in the house; none but she had ever slept there since
Willie's death. The farm-labourers had foddered the cattle and gone
home hours before. There were crickets chirping all round the warm
hearth-stones; there was the clock ticking with the peculiar beat
Susan had known from her childhood, and which then and ever since she