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"You look hale for a sick man."

"My cheeks look red because my hairs are white, and anyway you may keep rotten goods in a sound box. My outside's brave enough, but my inside's full of bots and poisons, combustions and cockolorums; sometimes I can scarce sleep at night for all the rousabout there is, and tur'ble pains getting me in the lunary parts."

"Have you taken nothing for it—nor seen a physician?"

"Aye, but all our physicians now are set on blood instead of broths. They pour out of us instead of pouring into us, and I'm scared to lose my blood. So I send for goody Lumsden and she makes me broths of poke-root and moonwort. But 'tis all to no purpose. Reckon 'tis in my stars that I mun die, and at my age I wouldn't mutter if I was sure of two things—that I'd die without pain and with a priest."

"I'll see that you die with a priest, Master Harman. All you have to do is to keep alive till I find one."

Her face darkened with an anxious thought. Then suddenly it grew light.

"So, Master—what if some fine day my brother came here and said Mass for us?"