Life was short, looking
back upon it. It seemed but yesterday since all the love of her
being had been poured out, and run to waste. The intervening years--
the long monotonous years that had turned her into an old woman
before her time--were but a dream.
The labourers coming in the dawn of the winter's day were surprised
to see the fire-light through the low kitchen-window. They knocked,
and hearing a moaning answer, they entered, fearing that something
had befallen their mistress. For all explanation they got these
words
"It is Michael Hurst. He was belated, and fell down the Raven's
Crag. Where does Eleanor, his wife, live?"
How Michael Hurst got to Yew Nook no one but Susan ever knew. They
thought he had dragged himself there, with some sore internal bruise
sapping away his minuted life. They could not have believed the
superhuman exertion which had first sought him out, and then dragged
him hither. Only Susan knew of that.
She gave him into the charge of her servants, and went out and
saddled her horse. Where the wind had drifted the snow on one side,
and the road was clear and bare, she rode, and rode fast; where the
soft, deceitful heaps were massed up, she dismounted and led her
steed, plunging in deep, with fierce energy, the pain at her heart
urging her onwards with a sharp, digging spur.
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