ust
trouble you to let me pass.'

She fell back against the trunk of the yew-tree as if he had struck
her, and the movement caused the baby to wake and cry, and the sound of
its little wailing voice followed him as he walked down the path and
out into the road, and he could hear it still when he reached his own
garden gate, where through the open door the light shone out from the
lamp that Jane Sands was just carrying into his room, where his supper
was spread and his armchair and slippers awaited him.

In after days, remembering that evening, he fancied he had heard
'Father' once more mingling with the baby's cry; but he went in and
shut the door and drew the bolt and went into the cheerful, pleasant
room, leaving outside the night and the child's cry and the black
shadow of the church and the yew-tree.

It was only the beginning of the annoyance, he told himself; he must
expect a continued course of persecution, and he listened, while he
made a pretence of eating his supper, for the steps outside and the
knock at the door, which would surely renew the unwarrantable attempt
to saddle him with the charge of the child. He listened too, as he sat
after supper, holding up the newspaper in front of his unobservant
eyes; and he listened most of the night as he tossed on his sleepless
pillow--listened to the wind that had risen and moaned and sobbed round
the house like a living thing in pain--listened to the pitiless rain
that followed, pelting down on the ivy outside and on the tiles above
his head, as if bent on finding its way in to the warm comfortable bed
where he lay.

CHAPTER III.

Something on the Doorstep--Bill Gray--Is That a Cat?--She's Like
Mother--A Baby's Shoe--Jane Restless

But the annoyance for which Mr Robins had been preparing himself was
not repeated; the persecution, if such had been intended, was not
continued. As the days passed by he began to leave off listening and
lying awake; he came out from his house or from the church without
furtive glances of expectation to the right and left; he lost that
constant feeling of apprehension and the necessity to nerve himself for
resistance. He had never been one to gossip or concern himself with
other people's matters, and Jane Sands had never brought the news of
the place to amuse her master, as many in her place would have done; so
now he had no way of knowing if his daughter's return had been known in
the place, or what comments the neighbo