de an effort to speak once or twice and failed, but at last the words
came.

"Tha went agen me, did tha?" he panted. "Dom thee!" and with a struggle
to summon all his strength, he raised himself, groping, struck at her
with his clenched hand, and failing to reach her, fell forward with his
face upon the bed.

It was all over when they raised him and laid him back again. Joan stood
upright, trembling a little, but otherwise calm.

CHAPTER XXXII - "Turned Methody!"

It had been generally expected that when all was over the cottage upon
the Knoll Road would be closed and deserted, but some secret fancy held
Joan to the spot. Perhaps the isolation suited her mood; perhaps the
mere sense of familiarity gave her comfort.

"I should na be less lonely any wheer else," she said to Anice Barholm.
"Theer's more here as I feel near to than i' any other place. I ha' no
friends, yo' know. As to th' choild, I con carry it to Thwaite's wife
i' th' mornin' when I go to th' pit, an' she'll look after it till neet,
for a trifle. She's getten childern o' her own, and knows their ways."

So she went backward and forward night and morning with her little
burden in her arms. The child was a frail, tiny creature, never strong,
and often suffering, and its very frailty drew Joan nearer to it. It
was sadly like Liz, pretty and infantine. Many a rough but experienced
mother, seeing it, prophesied that its battle with life would be brief.
With the pretty face, it had inherited also the helpless, irresolute,
appealing look. Joan saw this in the baby's eyes sometimes and was
startled at its familiarity; even the low, fretted cry had in it
something that was painfully like its girl-mother's voice. More than
once a sense of fear had come upon Joan when she heard and recognized
it. But her love only seemed to strengthen with her dread.

Day by day those who worked with her felt more strongly the change
developing so subtly in the girl. The massive beauty which had almost
seemed to scorn itself was beginning to wear a different aspect; the
defiant bitterness of look and tone was almost a thing of the past; the
rough, contemptuous speech was less scathing and more merciful when at
rare intervals it broke forth.

"Summat has coom over her," they said among themselves. "Happen it wur
trouble. She wur different, somehow."

They were somewhat uneasy under this alteration; but, on the whole, the
general feeling was by no means unfriendly. Time