, no one to whom I could go, and I thought I
should go mad!"

"And what did you do?" he asked.

"There seemed to me only one thing I could do," she said. "I could not
stay near my old home, I was ashamed--besides, my father and stepmother
drove me away with a curse. They said I had disgraced the name of
Lindsay. I always hated Scotland, and as my heart turned to my
mother's home, I determined I would go to Cornwall. I had just three
pounds, and with that I commenced my journey."

"You came by train?" he asked.

"No, I walked. I wanted to hoard my money. You see it was very
little."

"You walked all the way to Cornwall from Scotland?"

"Every step," she said. "It was winter time, too, and it often rained,
but somehow I felt as though Cornwall would give me a home, a welcome.
It took me weeks to do it, but I got there at last. Often I slept in a
farmer's barn; more than once I walked all through the night." And
into her eyes came a far-away look, while her lips quivered as if with
pain.

"And did you find a home and welcome?" he asked.

She shook her head. "How could I? I went straight to St. Ives, but
everyone had forgotten my mother, and her people were dead. You see, I
looked like a vagrant, my clothes were weather-stained, my boots were
worn out, I had no money, and no one wanted me. More than once I
thought I should have died of starvation."

"And what did you do?" he asked.

"I did not know what to do. I went from place to place. Here and
there I got a day's work, but I never begged. I would rather have died
than have done that."

A kind of grim satisfaction settled in the youth's face as he heard
this, but it was easy to see that the pain which lay in his mother's
heart also passed into his. He was not pleasant to look at at that
moment, and if murder can ever be seen in a man's eyes, it could be
seen in his at that moment.

"Well, mother?" he said at length, "and what afterwards?"

"I began to tramp northward again," she said. "I hoped that surely,
surely, someone would help me. And then one day I fell down by the
roadside. It was spring time now but terribly cold, and I thought,
'Now I shall die, and all will be over.' I think I went to sleep,
because I knew nothing of what happened. A great darkness fell upon
everything, and then, when I woke again, I found myself in a workhouse.
I knew it was a workhouse by the clothes the people wore and by the way
they talked; but I did