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"Give me paper paper and a pen quick, quick!" he cried. "What would you write, Joe?" said Rotha. "I want to write to him to Ralph Ralph Ray," he said, in a voice quite unlike his own. Rotha ran to the chest in the kitchen and opened it. In a side shelf pens were there and paper too. She came back, and put them before the sick man. But he was unconscious of what she had done.
There was no sound except the crackling of the dry boughs on the fire and the hollow drip of the melting snow. By the chair from which Mrs. Ray gazed vacantly and steadily Rotha sat with a book in her hand. She tried to read, but the words lost their meaning. Involuntarily her eyes wandered from the open page.
"The lad's dylt out fair beat, I tell thee; I picked him up frae the brae side." "He can scarce move hand or foot," cried Liza. "Come, quick!" Rotha was out at the wagon in a moment. "He's ill: he's unconscious," she said. "Where did you find him?" "A couple of mile or so outside Carlisle," answered Reuben.
"Perhaps, as I say, it's harder for me to ask than for you to answer, Rotha," he continued, and the strong man looked into the girl's eyes with a world of tenderness. "Do you think you have any feeling for Willy that is, more than the common? I saw how you sat together as I came in to you. I've marked you before, when he has been by. I've marked him, too.
It was a lone woman, bent and feeble. She went by them without a word. The brothers exchanged a look. "Poor Joe," said Rotha, almost in a whisper. But the girl's cup of joy could bear this memory. She knew her love at last. Willy stepped between Rotha and Ralph. He was deeply moved. He was about to yield up the dream of his life. He tried to speak, and stopped.
The prospect of the inevitable excitement of the adventure, amounting, in Liza's mind, to a sensation equivalent to sport, prevailed over her dread of the difficulties and dangers of a perilous mountain journey, and she again begged to be permitted to go. "Are you quite sure you wish it?" said Rotha, not without an underlying reluctance to accept of her companionship. "It's a rugged journey.
"And Laddie there, when he barks down the lonnin haven't you seen her then her breast heaving, the fingers of that hand of hers twitching, and the mumble of her poor lost voice, as though she'd say, 'Come, Rotha, my lass, be quick with the supper he's here, my lass, he's back?" "I think you must be right in that, Rotha that she misses Ralph," said Willy.
"Mother, dear mother, my mother," he cried, "think of what you would do; think of me standing, as I must soon stand very soon before God's face with this black crime on my soul. Let me cast it off from me forever. Do not tempt me to hide it! Rotha, pray with her; pray that she will not let me stand before God thus miserably burthened, thus red as scarlet with a foul, foul sin!"
But the light fell on the face of the new-comer. "Rotha!" he said. He drew her in, and was about to shut out the storm behind her. "No," she said almost nervously. "Come with me; some one waits outside to see you; some one who won't can't come in." She was wet; her hair was matted over her forehead, the sleet lying in beads upon it.
"I shall stay," he said. The girl's grief-worn face left no doubt in his mind of her purpose. They parted. When Rotha re-entered the sick-room a candle was burning on a table by the bedside. Mrs. Garth still crouched before the fire. The blacksmith was awake. As he lifted his eyes to Rotha's face, the girl saw that they wore the same watchful and troubled expression as before.
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