as were intelligible were all in one direction: how to comfort her, how to befriend her not in word but in deed, how to redeem her to her mother's love.

This exquisite July night would never be quite dark; but its beauty continued to ripen. Jacob, looking from the window, could only make out the outline of the great uncultivated bushes in the garden, as one may distinguish one cloud from another against the horizon in the radiance of the stars on a night when there is no moon. The bushes looked shadowy and unreal; but then a good many things had seemed to fall from reality these last few hours. He was not sorry that the darkness of the night was deepening; in his heart he was thankful that it was so. It seemed to hide from the eyes of men something that had come into all the sky over Teignbury. "Ah, if only this wickedness could be put away," Jacob said to himself; "if some wonderful miracle, like as in the old times, was to happen, some manifestation o' the compassion o' the Lord . . . that she might raise her face again afore them as loved and trusted her . . ."

Jacob Laur was not much of an idealist: yet fanciful ideas occasionally came into his head. Those fantastic shadowy bushes outlined against the dark purple sky exercised a strange fascination over his not very vivid imagination. He spent much of his vigil by the sleeping child looking out at them; and at last he noticed with some surprise (for the night was a dead calm) that the tops of the bushes were moving. They moved once or twice, then were still; then stirred again gently. Jacob stared out at them intently. Was the wind rising? Yes; the wind must be rising, for there could not be a doubt that the bushes were swaying to and fro in the gloom. All at once Jacob heard the snapping of a branch at its joint-there was no deceiving his ears as to this sound; then the bush that was nearest to the window seemed to grow smaller-its branches were really being pushed aside; then a slight girlish figure came forth and stood before the window. It was Maggie-it was Maggie come home in the darkness and through the trees so that no eye should see her. She came close to the window, put her hand to her eyes, and peered in. Apparently she could see no one. "Mother . . ." she whispered, her lips almost touching the pane, her left hand supporting her on the window-sill. Jacob did not stir. He sat with his hand to his side; there was a fear upon him that his heart, after that first wild convulsion, had ceased to beat. "Mother . . . are you in, mother?" Maggie said. And Jacob marvelled at the firmness and composure of her voice.

He rose then and limped to the window. It occurred to him that something supernatural was happening; like most men brought up with their faces to the earth, he was somewhat superstitious. He did not at once speak. When Maggie saw him she drew back a little from the window, and stood perfectly still looking at him. She could see his face better than he could see hers, and it frightened her—she had never supposed that his eyes could look like that.

Maggie turned aside, as though about to go away; and then Jacob raised his hands as a signal to her to stay, and called out 'Maggie!" in a voice in which he meant to put a ring of welcome, though it was so low that the girl did not know that he had spoken to her. She appeared undecided, and Jacob called her by name again, this time so that she could hear. She stood facing him once more: "Yes, Jacob, it's me," she said. "Is mother at home?"

He went out into the pitch-dark passage and opened the door for her. It was her own home, but it seemed to Jacob as though he were entertaining her. She stepped with strange rapidity into the passage, as though to escape from some one. Yet once she had got into the house, and after Jacob had shut the door, she remained in the passage-stood there in the darkness absolutely motionless, so far as Jacob could tell, for he could not see her in the least, and saying not a word. It was like the conduct of a girl who had lost her way, and was trying to remember where she was, where she had come from. Her child was not in her arms.

"Maggie," Jacob said, “. . . you've come home, Maggie."

She sighed twice before speaking. "Yes, Jacob," she replied: but she did not even then go down the passage. "Is mother in, Jacob?" she added after a moment's silence; and Jacob knew from the sound of her voice that her face was turned from him.

66

No, Maggie. She's gone west to your sister's. I'm lookin' after the . . . your mother asked me to stay in the house till she came back."

The girl sighed again: the deepest, strangest, most piteous sigh Jacob had ever heard from a human breast. Before either had spoken again, yet another sigh had broken from her; and then he knew that she was moving along the passage; and then he heard her sighing again.

"Maggie! Maggie!" Jacob cried; "your heart's breakin', Maggie!

IV.

SHE went into the room in which the child of wedlock slept before the now smouldering fire. There was a dull red glow in the room, but it was hardly possible to see anything by this. It seemed to Jacob that, though still so slight, fragile, girl-like, Maggie had grown taller and more woman-like since he had last seen her. Against the wall, just to the right of the door, was a wooden bench, and the girl sank down on this in an attitude of unutterable weariness. Jacob stood by the table regarding her in silence. It occurred to him that she was looking at the cradle before the fire, and so that she might not see it, and so revive painful memories, he put a chair between her and it (doing this with much cunning simplicity, he imagined, though Maggie knew well enough why he did it), and sat on the chair with his back to the cradle. But she said nothing. Her continued silence was incomprehensible to Jacob; it appalled him; it seemed to be the cloak of some deeper, darker mystery. Her sighs, that seemed to come forth from her very soul, meant so much; yet all the meaning of them was a mystery. Why did she not weep if she were sorrowful? Why did she not speak to him that he might answer, and try to lighten the heavy burden of her care?

She wept at last wept so pitifully, so heartrendingly!-wept as Jacob had never heard, had never thought to hear, a woman weep. This was as they sat in the wan red light, in the hushed awe of their insupportable suffering; and when the child in the cradle behind. Jacob began to cry, Jacob put his hand to the cradle and rocked it softly, and almost at once the child's crying ceased. But a loud, sudden, bitter sob had gone up; a sob that took possession of Jacob Laur's being; and the girl on the bench bowed her face nearly to her knees, and gave way to a convulsion of grief. Jacob, so far as words went, was not much of a comforter. "Maggie! Maggie! . . . don't cry like that, Maggie!" was all he could find to say; and her weeping was so vehement that she did not hear him say even this.

Jacob had a small pocket-lantern with him, and he lighted this and put it on the narrow black mantelshelf among the shining metal ornaments. Then he went to the window and drew down the blind. While he was doing this there was a slight movement in the room, and turning round to see what it was, he saw Maggie on her knees by the cradle. Her left arm was thrown over the wood head-covering, her

right elbow was resting on the edge of the cradle; she was kissing the child and sobbing bitterly. "Truly her heart's breakin'," Jacob said to himself. He came back and stood near the cradle, and when Maggie looked up he saw her face clearly for the first time in the lantern-light. She did not look at him; they were close together; but he could tell that she was for the moment unconscious of his presence that she was gazing far away at some object that might be in another world. She was as a girl partly bereft of her senses. And how old and careworn she looked! There was premature age on her sweet face; her eyes, since they had looked on sin, had lost the bright, half-mischievous merriment that used to dance continually in them. Jacob could not help recalling, even in this hour of bitter trial and humiliation, the winsome trick she had had (a trick that was just spiced with maidenly sauciness) of beginning to laugh whenever her eyes met his, which, however, had not of late been very frequent, for during her last days at home, when he had sought her out so that he might be thrilled and inspired by the radiant sweetness that seemed to shine from her presence, from all she did or said, from her every movement, from even the fun that she had been in the habit of making of him and his dog-like love for her, she had really declined to treat him seriously, and she had once (he remembered the words vividly enough now!) said to him in her laughing way: "Jacob, there's no use you hanging about as though I'd take any notice of you! You're not the kind of man I'm after for a husband. You're not my style of man in the least, Jacob; no, no, I'll only be satisfied wi' a sweetheart that's a man all up and down!" -the inference being, of course, that Jacob was not that kind of man, as, indeed, he was not exactly. But what a change now! She was like some goodly flower that in the morning had been fair to look upon, and before the night fell had been bruised and broken and laid low by a pitiless storm, or as one who had compressed a life's sorrow into a few short hours.

"Jacob," she said, still kneeling by the cradle, still staring in that fixed insane way at the dark-yellow window-blind, "Jacob, I must tell you what I've done. I've taken my child's life. . . . Oh, Jacob, it was dead when I looked at it; I didn't kill it-I didn't take its life, Jacob. . . . Oh, I was out o' my mind-I did it when I was out o' my mind; I'd never have done it else! . . .”

She was silent again. If the table had not been solid and strong, so that Jacob could lean against it, he would have sunk on his knees on the floor.

"Where's mother, Jacob?"

He did not reply; he could not he remembered that he had told her.

"I can see the child where I put it in the hole in the wall. . . Oh, Jacob, I've heard it crying ever since I left it there, and somebody's been following me through the fields. . . . I couldn't see him; but I heard him calling to me to go back to the child. . . . But I couldn't go back; something made me run faster and faster from the place. . . . I did it because I lost my place; they wouldn't let me keep the child there. I didn't know what to do with

it, Jacob, for mother sent me word that I was never to darken her door again, an' I didn't know where to turn for shelter, for I'd no friends in Corborough as I could go to till I found another place. Jacob! I know I'm bad; I feel as God's wrath has fallen on me. .. But they drove me out o' my mind at the station; many o' them as was there, comin' in by the same train, knew me . . . an' knew what had happened. . . . Oh, Jacob, I saw 'em pointin' at me an' whisperin', as though I was lower than the lowest; an' Mrs. Crale, when I was tryin' to get away, cried, wi' a laugh over my shoulder, 'Well, Maggie, an' how's the baby?' I had the child in my arms, an' she tried to see its face, but I wouldn't let her. . . . Oh, everybody in the station must have heard that she was mockin' me! . . . Everything was swimmin' afore my eyes; and if Susan Long hadn't given me a mouthful o' water, I'd never ha' been able to get out o' the waitin'-room, where I ran to hide myself. Then I started to walk home; for I thought, if mother does turn me away from her door, then me an' the child 'll die by the roadside. But I hadn't the heart to go through the village, so I went up by Pitbank and Longscar, and round by the Whinny Banks. . . . But I lost my way; I didn't know where I was; it was gettin' dark, an' when I looked at the child, when I was crossin' the wood bridge at the Whinny Banks, it was cold cold as ice; its eyes shut like as if it was sleepin', Jacob. . . . I pressed it to my breast, an' spoke to it, but it never opened its eyes, never moved; I thought it must be dead. . . . Then, as I sat wi’ it in my arms on a bank beside the hedge, something said to me, Couldn't I go home wi'out the child? . . . if it was dead... couldn't I put it somewhere where it would never be found... seein' as it was dead . . . an' say to mother as I'd put it out to nurse; then mother might relent, an' take me in, if I was alone, an' I'd begin a new life, and repent all my life what I'd done, an' pray for the child. . . for it's never been baptized, Jacob! . . . So as I walked along wi' it, everything being so lonely, I came to a wall