'Ay!' she said. 'Aa came in at tea-time, an' she's been maistly taakin' ivver sence!'
The incoherent whisperings and restless movements, which obliged Catherine constantly to replace the coverings over the poor wasted and fevered body, went on for sometime. Catherine noticed presently, with a little thrill, that the light was beginning to change. The weather was growing darker and stormier; the wind shook the house in gusts; and the farther shoulder of High Fell, seen in distorted outline through the casemented window, was almost hidden by the trailing rain clouds. The mournful western light coming from behind the house struck the river here and there; almost everything else was gray and dark. A mountain ash, just outside the window, brushed the panes every now and then; and in the silence, every surrounding sound--the rare movements in the next room, the voices of quarrelling children round the door of a neighboring house, the far-off barking of dogs--made itself distinctly audible.
Suddenly Catherine, sunk in painful reverie, noticed that the mutterings from the bed had ceased for some little time. She turned her chair, and was startled to find those weird eyes fixed with recognition on herself. There was a curious, malign intensity, a curious triumph in them.
'It must be--eight o'clock'--said the gasping voice--'_eight o'clock_;' and the tone became a whisper, as though the idea thus half involuntarily revealed had been drawn jealously back into the strongholds of consciousness.
'Mary,' said Catherine, falling on her knees beside the bed, and taking one of the restless hands forcibly into her own--'can't you put this thought away from you? We are not the playthings of evil spirits--we are the children of God! We are in His hands. No evil thing can harm us against His will.'
It was the first time for many days she had spoken openly of the thought which was in the mind of all, and her whole pleading soul was in her pale, beautiful face. There was no response in the sick girl's countenance, and again that look of triumph, of sinister exultation. They had tried to cheat her into sleeping, and living, and in spite of them, at the supreme moment, every sense was awake and expectant. To what was the materialized peasant imagination looking forward? To an actual call, an actual following, to the free mountain-side, the rush of the wind, the phantom figure floating on before her, bearing her into the heart of the storm? Dread was gone, pain was gone; there was only rapt excitement and fierce anticipation.