"I've heered," he said, holding out his grimy hand. "I wish yoh
well, Stephen, boy. So'll the old 'oman. Yoh'll come an' see
us, soon? Ye'r' lookin' fagged, an' yer eyes is gettin' more like
yer father's. I'm glad things is takin' a good turn with yoh;
an' yoh'll never be like him, starvin' fur th' kind wured, an'
havin' to die without it. I'm glad yoh've got true love. She'd
a fair face, I think. I wish yoh well, Stephen."

Holmes shook the grimy hand, and then stood a moment looking back
to the mill, from which the hands were just coming, and then down
at the phaeton moving idly down the road. How cold it was
growing! People passing by had a sickly look, as if they were
struck by the plague. He pushed the damp hair back, wiping his
forehead, with another glance at the mill-women coming out of the
gate, and then followed the phaeton down the hill.



CHAPTER VI.


An hour after, the evening came on sultry, the air murky, opaque,
with yellow trails of colour dragging in the west: a sullen
stillness in the woods and farms; only, in fact, that dark,
inexplicable hush that precedes a storm. But Lois, coming down
the hill-road, singing to herself, and keeping time with her
whip-end on the wooden measure, stopped when she grew conscious
of it. It seemed to her blurred fancy more than a deadening sky:
a something solemn and unknown, hinting of evil to come. The