"It is impossible, my lordthe woman is dying!"Then two days before the end he came. As she was[Pg 304] standing by the barn door he appeared at the horse-pond, and crossed over to her at once. He had seen that she was waiting for himperhaps he had seen it on half a dozen other occasions when she had not seen him."Aye," interrupted Lucy, "but you can help what is to come."Almost the whole south was filled by the great lumpish mass of the Moor, no longer tawny and hummocky, but lined with hedges and scored with furrows, here and there a spread of pasture, with the dotted sheep. A mellow corn-coloured light rippled over it from the west, and the sheep bleated to each other across the meadows that had once been wastes....Mrs. Backfield arrived in a washed-out bed-gown. A fire was lit and water put on to boil. Fanny's, however, did not seem just an ordinary case of "fits"; she lay limp in her mother's arms, strangely blue round the mouth, her eyes half open.