She would have risen
up to go away, but he held her tight, for here and now she was all
his own, and he did not know when such a time might come again. So
the two sat crouched up and silent, till they heard the horn blowing
at the field-gate, which was the summons home to any wanderers
belonging to the farm, and at this hour of the evening, signified
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.
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