We were happy with each other, and we've been man and wife to each other just as truly as if a priest had mumbled over us." "But why didn't you marry her when I came?
Surely you must have known what it would mean to me.

It was bad enough without that." The old man hesitated.

"I'll own I was wrong," he said, finally, staring out into the sunshine with an odd expression.

"It was thoughtless and wrong, dead wrong; but I've loved you better than any daughter was ever loved in this wide world, and I've worked and starved and froze and saved, and so has Alluna, so that you might have something to live on when I'm gone, and be different to us.

It won't be long now, I guess.