His wife, from being at first useful to him, had become agreeable, and at last dear; and as he contemplated her approaching fate, he could not help thinking out audibly, “that he should be a lonesome man when she was gone.” The Dame, this time, heard the survivorship foreboded without starting; but she marveled much at what she thought the infatuation of a doomed man. So perfect was her faith in the infallibility of St. Mark, that she had even seen the symptoms of mortal disease, as palpable as plague spots, on the devoted Yeoman. Giving his body up, therefore, for lost, a strong sense of duty persuaded her, that it was imperative on her, as a Christian, to warn the unsuspecting Farmer of his dissolution. Accordingly, with a solemnity adapted to the subject, a tenderness of recent growth, and a Memento Mori face, she broached the matter in the following question--“Master, how bee’st?” “As hearty, Dame, as a buck,”--the Dame shook her head,--“and I wish thee the like,”--at which he shook his head himself. A dead silence ensued: the Farmer was as unprepared as ever. There is a great fancy for breaking the truth by dropping it gently,--an experiment which has never answered any more than with Ironstone China. The Dame felt this, and thinking it better to throw the news at her husband at once, she told him in as many words, that he was a dead man. It was now the Yeoman’s turn to be staggered. By a parallel course of reasoning, he had just wrought himself up to a similar disclosure, and the Dame’s death-warrant was just ready upon his tongue, when he met with his own despatch, signed, sealed and delivered. Conscience instantly pointed out the oracle from which she had derived the omen, and he turned as pale as “the pale of society”--the colourless complexion of late hours. St. Martin had numbered his years; and the remainder days seemed discounted by St. Thomas. Like a criminal cast to die, he doubted if the die was cast, and appealed to his wife:-- “Thee hast watched, Dame, at the church porch, then?” “Ay, Master.” “And thee didst see me spirituously?” “In the brown wrap, with the boot hose. Thee were coming to the church, by Fairthorn Gap; in the while I were coming by the Holly Hedge”--For a minute the Farmer paused--but the next, he burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter; peal after peal--and each higher than the last,--according to the hysterical gamut of the hyæna. The poor woman had but one explanation for this phenomenon--she thought it a delirium--a lightening before death, and was beginning to wring her hands, and lament, when she was checked by the merry Yeoman:-- “Dame, thee bee’st a fool. It was I myself thee seed at the church porch. I seed thee too,--with a notice to quit upon thy face--but, thanks to God, thee bee’st a-living, and that is more than I cared to say of thee this day ten-month!”