"Sit down! Nay, I tell you we must go at once. Come, there is no time to lose. He may be dead before we see him." "I don't understand," said Barbara. She stood under the cresset's light like a rock, while Lucy, like a wave, fretted about her. Exasperating to such a nature as Lucy's was her sister's calmness. "Oh! you don't understand," she cried. "You never have understood. You have a heart like a lump of ice. You have always been against Joel and me. It is you who thrust us apart. But, now that he is dying, I thought you'd relent. Still, I'll go----" "Has he sent for you?" "Nay! I tell you he's dying. Oh, Joel, Joel, to think you should be leaving me again so soon. But I'm coming, yes, I'm coming." The girl wrung her hands, looked wildly round, then her face hardened. "If you'll not come, I'll go alone," she said. "I'm not afraid of the dark." But Barbara barred the doorway. She pointed to the stool from which she had risen. "Sit down," she said, "and tell me what you know. Then, if you're determined to go, I'll go too." "Joel may be dead by then." "Whether he lives or dies is not in your hands. It's not to you, Lucy, that his soul will be given." "Oh, I wish I had passed by and left you alone. I might have known, I might have had more sense, than think you would feel for me. You were always hard as flint, though I used to believe you were a saint. But don't cast me off, Barbara. I'm very miserable." Barbara knelt down by the distracted girl, and put her arms round her. "What is wrong with Joel?" she asked softly. "He's dying, oh God, he's dying, and I'm not there to bid him good-bye." Then, amid sobs, she told her sister all that she knew, about the way Joel and Peter had wrestled, and how Joel had strained himself and broken a blood-vessel. He was now lying at the Shepherd's Rest, attended by Timothy Hadwin and her husband. Peter had sent her word that he could not get home that night. "I'll never forgive Peter," wept Lucy. "He oughtn't to have wrestled. He knows I hate wrestling. I've always hated it. Perhaps I knew at the back of my mind it would some day bring trouble to me." "This is childish, Lucy," said Barbara, with a note of revolt in her voice. She scorned her sister for preferring Joel to Peter. Joel had nothing to recommend him save his physical perfection, and his old name. His claim to sympathy, his affectionate nature, had never touched her, so she failed to realise their effect on Lucy. If Peter had been her husband, she would have found a glory in loving where duty pointed. Alas, duty bade her pluck out her love and cast it from her.