with the persistence of a bloodhound tracking its prey, he
walked on and on, until he came to a village, or rather a collection of
homesteads. Very small it was, consisting only of an inn, a house, half
cottage and half shop, and a few red-tiled cottages wherein the bargemen
lived, when they were at home, which was seldom. In the bright sunlight,
the blue sky overhead and the shining river in the foreground, it formed
a pretty enough picture.

In the little shop parlour now sat a woman and her husband, at their
five-o'clock tea.

"John Ashford, Grocer," was the inscription over the shop door; and
these were John Ashford and his wife Lucy. They had two children, now
playing by the river side; and were, as the bargemen's wives expressed
it, "doing comfortable."

The man's face was a good-humoured one, round, honest in expression, and
commonplace. His wife was not so ordinary; a fair-haired, small-figured
little woman, she showed traces of having been a "village beauty" in her
young days, of the pink-and-white, shallow type. But in her eyes, and
along the corners of her somewhat weak-looking mouth, there were signs
of an ever-present fear.

Even now, as she sat pouring out her husband's tea, her habitual
nervousness showed itself in the restless movements of her unoccupied
hand, and the sudden start with which she would greet the slightest
unexpected sound, or the knocking of a customer on the little counter.
From where she sat she could see her children, and once or twice she
smiled gently as she waved her hand to them, where they were playing
with an elder girl who was in charge of them.

"I say, Lucy," said John, as he drank his tea noisily, "how's the girl
going on? Getting over her shyness a bit, ain't she?"

His wife started; but he was evidently too accustomed to this to notice
her.

"Yes," she said, reaching out for his cup. "Poor girl, she's seen some
trouble, I'll be bound; and for one so young, too, and innocent. The
world's a hard place!"

"Yes, indeed," agreed John Ashford, with a glance through the window,
where the little group of three were playing. "Let me see, she's been
here a matter of four weeks, hasn't she--since I went over to Walton.
Rum thing me finding her at all. If I hadn't come across the moor
instead of along the road, she'd 'ave been in that furze bush still."

Mrs. Ashford shuddered at the suggestions of his words.

"She hasn't given us no account of herself now," he continued i