“Patsy darlint, do ye be minding whin that bit av news about the countess visiting at Silver Bush was put in the paper and ye niver cud find out who did be doing it? Darlint, it was be way av being mesilf. I’ve been often thinking av owning up to it but niver cud I get up me courage. I did be wanting all the folks to know av it so I ’phoned it in. The editor, he did be touching it up a bit though. Can ye be forgiving me, Patsy?”

“Forgive? Oh, Judy! Why…that was…nothing.”

“It wasn’t in kaping wid the traditions av Silver Bush and well I knew it. And, Patsy darlint, all thim stories av mine…most av thim happened but maybe I did touch thim up a bit, dramatic-like, now and agin. Me grandmother niver was a witch…but she cud see things other folks cudn’t. One day I do be minding I was walking wid her, me being a slip av tin or twilve…and we met a man there was talk av. He was alone, saming-like, but me grandmother sez to him, sez she, ‘Good day to you and yer company.’ I’ve niver forgot his face but whin I asked her what she mint she said to thank God I didn’t be knowing and not another word wud she say. He did be hanging himself not long after on his veranda, deliberate-like. And now I’ve tould ye this I’m not worrying over innything. All will be coming right…I’m knowing it somehow, being death-wise. Love doesn’t iver be dying, Patsy. I’d like to have seen ye a bride, darlint. But it’s glad I am I’ll niver have to live at Silver Bush wid ye gone.”

One afternoon Judy wandered a little. She thought she heard Joe’s whistle and Rae’s laugh. “The Silver Bush girls always had the pretty way av laughing,” she murmured. She raked down someone who “didn’t be washing the butter properly.” Once she said, “If ye’d set a light in the windy, Patsy.” Again she was hunting through an imaginary parsley bed for something she couldn’t find. “I’m fearing I’ve lost the knack av finding thim,” she sighed.

But when Pat went up to her in the dim she was lying peacefully. Mrs. Binnie had just gone down and had passed Pat on the stairs with an ominous moan.