bottom--ice-crusted now at the
edges, and the water creeping like a slow black snake between the
snow-dusted banks.

We waited up long for my father that night, mother and I. Bob had gone
down to the village--to do some shopping, he said. But I could easily
have told in what shop to find him--the one in which they don't, as a
general rule, do up the goods with string and brown paper.

Then in the slow night, I with a book and she with her stocking, my
mother and I sat and waited. It would have been nothing very unusual
if father had not returned at all that night. He sometimes did this,
when business kept him at East Dene or Thorsby. On such occasions his
orders were that we should lock up at eleven and go quietly to bed.
Mother mostly let the maid, Grace Rigley, go home to her father's house
at the other end of the village. Indeed, we were always glad when she
did, for it let us have the house to ourselves, a pleasure which people
who keep servants all the time never know.

We gave father till twelve that night--why, I do not know--except that
the hill road was an unusual one for him to travel. And what with the
sloughs and quags, the peat-faces and green, shaking bogs, it was not
at all a canny country after dark.

I had to keep mother up, too.

"Why did he wave his hand to me this mornin', Joe?" she said, more than
once; "he didn't use to do that!"

"Oh, he just saw you at the window, mother," I answered her, "and
perhaps he thought you were a bit 'touched' at his not fancying his
breakfast."

"No, Joe," she cried quite sharply; "me 'touched'--with him--never! He
knew better."

"Touched" was, of course, our local word for offended.

Then would mother knit a while, and run again to the door to listen.

"I thought I heard him!" she said. "I am nearly sure."

And there came a kind of white joy upon her face, curious in such a
naturally rosy woman with cheeks like apples. But it was only some of
the van horses moving restlessly or scraping their bedding in the
stables.

Now our house with its big, bricked yard, and all the different
out-buildings--stores, coal-sheds, salt-pens, granaries, oil-cake house
and cellars, occupied quite a big quadrangle. At the corner was Bob
McKinstrey's room, through which was the only entrance excepting by the
big gate. Bob had two doors, one opening out on a narrow lane, called
Stye Alley, where poor people had kept pigs before my father and the
local authority