by the hearth-stone,
motionless and strangely quiet; he, the restless imp, who was usually
so full of life. Never a glance, until, the centre of the floor being
at last clean again, Moll, on her knees, came with her pail of
soap-suds to the white river that surrounded the corner of the kitchen
where Jan lay. A white river? Nay, there was a crimson river that
mingled with it; a stream of crimson drops that flowed from the stone
under the child's head.

Moll leapt to her feet on the instant. What ailed the boy? She had
beaten him, it is true, but then she had beaten him often before this
in his father's absence. A beating was nothing new to little Jan. Why
had he fallen? What made him lie so still? She turned him over. Ah! it
was easy to see the reason. As she flung him from her in her rage,
the child in his fall had struck his head against the sharp edge of
the hearth-stone, and there he lay now, with the life-blood steadily
flowing from his temple.

A feeling that Rough Moll had never been conscious of before gripped
her heart at the sight. Was her boy dead? Had she killed him? What
would his father say? What would her husband call her? A murderer? Was
she that? Was that what the Stranger had meant when he had looked at
her with those piercing eyes? He might have called her a liar, at the
sight of the churn full of cream, but he had not done so; and little
she would have cared if he had. But a murderer! Was murder in her
heart?

Lifting Jan as carefully as she could, she carried him upstairs to the
small bedroom under the roof, where he usually lay on a tiny pallet by
her side. But this night the child's small figure lay in the wide bed,
and big Moll, with all her clothes on, hung over him; or if she lay
down for a moment or two, it was only on the hard little pallet by his
side.

All that night Moll watched. But all that night Jan never moved. All
the next day he lay unconscious, while Moll did her clumsy utmost to
staunch the wound in his forehead. Long before it was light, she tried
to send one of her maids for the doctor; but the storm was now so
violent that none could leave or enter the house.

Her Ladyship's order went unheeded. The thirty pounds of butter were
never made. But My Lady, who was a mother herself, not only forgave
Moll for spoiling her Yuletide festivities, but even told her, when
she heard of the disaster, that she need not trouble about the rent
until her boy was better.

Until he was bet