This had given us access to his grandmother's hovel, and many a time she had saved me from the consequences of Aunt Dorothy's just wrath by kindling up her poor embers of fire to dry my soaked shoes, and cleaning the mud from my clothes. Simple easy services, but such as made it altogether impossible for Roger and me to regard the poor, kind, shrivelled hands that had rendered them as having signed a compact with Satan. Besides, did we not see how good she was, with all her scoldings, to Tim, and know from broken words which had dropped now and then how she had loved her only daughter, the mother of Cicely and Tim, and how sore her heart was for the poor, lost girl, and what a power of wronged and disappointed love lay seething and fermenting beneath the sour sharp words she spoke? Roger and I knew that Gammer Grindle was no outlaw from the pale of humanity by seeing it; and Rachel Forster knew it, I believe, by seeing Him at whose feet so many outcasts from human sympathy found a welcome. And so it happened, that of all the village no one but Rachel, Roger and I sought access, or would have had it, to Gammer Grindle's hovel, so that Rachel that day accompanied Tim home, and was permitted to share his grandmother's watch that night. For Tim's exhaustion soon changed to delirious fever, as his wound began to be inflamed, and it was as much as both the women could do to keep him from rushing out of the hovel to "follow Master Roger." All the time, they noticed he kept the hand of his unwounded arm firmly clenched over something. But no coaxing or commands, even from his grandmother's voice, which he was so used to obey, would induce him to unclasp his hand or let it go. All that night and the next day the two women watched by the poor lad, bathing his head, and trying vainly to keep him still. But towards evening his strength began to fail, and it was plain that the fever, having done its work, was relinquishing its hold to the cold grasp of Another stronger than it. The poor lad's delirious entreaties ceased, and he lay so still, that Rachel could hear the cold ripples of the Mere outside plashing softly among the rushes, stirred by the night wind; and they sounded to her like the slow waters of the river of Death. Only now and then he said, in a low voice, like a child crooning to itself, "Poor Tim, Master Roger knows. Master Roger said, you have done all you could. Go home." Once also his eye brightened, and he said, "Cicely, sister Cicely! Tell her to come soon--soon. I have watched for her so long!" Rachel tried to speak to him about Jesus, the loving Master of us all; he did not object, but whether he understood or not, she could not tell. He did not alter the words which had been so engraven on his poor faithful heart. Only they grew fainter and fainter, and fewer and more broken, until, with one sigh, "Master--home," the poor feeble spirit departed, and the poor feeble body was at rest.