For the last year or two he had lingered at the church door to walk home with her and her father, but she had thought little of it.

He was their nearest neighbor, and made himself useful in giving her father hints about his little farm, besides sparing his laborer to do them an occasional day's work.

It seemed perfectly natural that he should walk home with them across the moors from their distant parish church.
But as soon as the roads were passable Mrs.Nixey made her way up to the solitary farmstead.

The last time she had seen old Marlowe he had been ailing, yet she was quite unprepared for the rapid change that had passed over him.

He was cowering in the chimney-corner, his face yellow and shrivelled, and his eyes, once blue as Phebe's own, sunken in their sockets, and glowering dimly at her, with the strange intensity of gaze in the deaf and dumb.