for yer, and everything prospers as yer touches,
and you're jest as fort'nate as you were t'other way. With a young
thing like you, Ally, young and pretty and genteel, luck aint never
'ard; it soon turns, and it will with you. No, the money's not found
yet," continued the old woman, rising and taking off her bonnet and
giving it a little shake; "but it's sure to be to-night or to-morrow,
for I've got the promise of the master that he won't leave a stone
unturned to find out the thief. I did give him my mind, Alison. I
wish you could have heard me. I let out on him. I let him see what
sort of breed I am'--a Phipps wot married a Reed."

"Oh, as if that mattered!" groaned Alison.

"Well, it did with him, love. Breed allers tells. You may be low-born
and nothing will 'ide it--not all the dress and not all the, by way of,
fine manners. It's jest like veneer--it peels off at a minute's
notice. But breed's true to the core; it wears. Alison, it wears to
the end."

"Well, Grannie," said Alison, who had often heard these remarks before,
"what did Mr. Shaw really say?"

"My love, he treated me werry respectful. He told me the whole story,
calm and quiet, and then he said that he was quite sure himself that
you was innocent."

"He didn't say that, really?"

"I tell you he did, child; and wot's more, he offered you the place
back again."

It was Alison's turn now to rise to her feet. She laughed hysterically.

"And does he think I'll go," she said, "with this hanging over me? No!
I'd starve first. If that's all, he has his answer. I'll never go
back to that shop till I'm cleared. Oh, I don't know where your good
news is," she continued; "everything seems very black and dreadful. If
it were not for----" Her rosy lips trembled; she did not complete her
sentence.

"I could bear it," she said, in a broken voice, "if it were not
for----" Again she hesitated, rushed suddenly across the room, and
locked herself into the little bedroom which she shared with one of her
sisters.

CHAPTER III.

Grannie pottered about and got the tea. As she did so she shook her
old head, and once a dim moisture came to her eyes. Her hand ached so
painfully that if she had been less brave she would have sat down and
given herself up to the misery which it caused her. But Grannie had
never thought much of herself, and she was certainly not going to do so
to-day when her darling was in such trouble.

"Whatever I do,