iron jaws. "She never--let go.
Somehow, too, she'd the law on her side in outward showin', an' th'
right. But I hated religion, knowin' her. Well, ther' 's a day of
makin' things clear, comin'."

They had reached the corner now, and Polston turned down the lane.

"Yoh 'll think o' Yare's case?" he said.

"Yes. But how can I help it," Holmes said, lightly, "if I am like my
mother, here?"--putting his hand to his mouth.

"God help us, how can yoh? It's hard to think father and mother leave
their souls fightin' in their childern, cos th' love was wantin' to
make them one here."

Something glittered along the street as he spoke: the silver mountings
of a low-hung phaeton drawn by a pair of Mexican ponies. One or two
gentlemen on horseback were alongside, attendant on a lady within, Miss
Herne. She turned her fair face, and pale, greedy eyes, as she passed,
and lifted her hand languidly in recognition of Holmes. Polston's face
coloured.

"I've heered," he said, holding out his grimy hand. "I wish yoh well,
Stephen, boy. So'll the old 'oman. Yoh'll come an' see us, soon?
Ye'r' lookin' fagged, an' yer eyes is gettin' more like yer father's.
I'm glad things is takin' a good turn with yoh; an' yoh'll never be
like him, starvin' fur th' kind wured, an' havin' to die without it.
I'm glad yoh've got true love. She'd a fair face, I think. I wish yoh
well, Stephen."

Holmes shook the grimy hand, and then stood a moment looking back to
the mill, from which the hands were just coming, and then down at the
phaeton moving idly down the road. How cold it was growing! People
passing by had a sickly look, as if they were struck by the plague. He
pushed the damp hair back, wiping his forehead, with another glance at
the mill-women coming out of the gate, and then followed the phaeton
down the hill.

CHAPTER VI.

An hour after, the evening came on sultry, the air murky, opaque, with
yellow trails of colour dragging in the west: a sullen stillness in the
woods and farms; only, in fact, that dark, inexplicable hush that
precedes a storm. But Lois, coming down the hill-road, singing to
herself, and keeping time with her whip-end on the wooden measure,
stopped when she grew conscious of it. It seemed to her blurred fancy
more than a deadening sky: a something solemn and unknown, hinting of
evil to come. The dwarf-pines on the road-side scowled weakly at her
through the gray; the very silver minnows in the pools