ter than a fuss.

"I saw Alliner; he was a decent fellow, though dirty, distressed in his
simple, shallow-pated way, and more obviously ignorant than his wife. I
spoke to the schoolmistress, a shrewd and kindly married woman.

"Poor Emmeline! Yes, she had noticed. It was very sad and wicked! She
hinted, but would not do more than hint, at the son of the miller, but
he was back again, fighting in France now, and, after all, her evidence
amounted to no more than his reputation with girls. Besides, one is very
careful what one says in a country village. I, however, was so angry
that I should not have been careful if I could have got hold of
anything at all definite.

"I did not see the child again before my leave was up. The very next
thing I heard of her, was in a newspaper--Emmeline Alliner, sixteen, had
been committed for trial for causing the death of her illegitimate child
by exposure. I was on the sick list in January, and went home to rest. I
had not been there two days before I received a visit from a solicitor
of our assize town, who came to ask me if I would give evidence at the
girl's trial as to the nature of her home surroundings. I learned from
him the details of the lugubrious business. It seems that she had
slipped out one bitter afternoon in December, barely a fortnight after
her confinement, carrying her baby. There was snow on the ground, and it
was freezing hard, but the sun was bright, and it was that perhaps which
tempted her. She must have gone up towards the Downs by the lane where I
had twice met her; gone up, and stopped at the very gap in the bank
where she had been sitting lost in that heavy dream when I saw her last.
She appears to have subsided there in the snow, for there she was found
by the postman just as it was getting dark, leaning over her knees as if
stupefied, with her chin buried in her hands--and the baby stiff and
dead in the snow beside her. When I told the lawyer how I had seen her
there ten weeks before, and of the curious dazed state she had been in,
he said at once: 'Ah! the exact spot. That's very important; it looks
uncommonly as if it were there that she came by her misfortune. What do
you think? It's almost evident that she'd lost sense of her
surroundings, baby and all. I shall ask you to tell us about that at the
trial. She's a most peculiar child; I can't get anything out of her. I
keep asking her for the name of the man, or some indication of how it
came about, but a