of his, and of yours."

She paused a moment before she replied. "Sam hasn't done any harm to
nobody," she said.

"I don't say he has. I only want to know where he is. You can
understand, Carry, that it would be best that he should be at home."

She paused again, and then she blurted out her answer. "He went out
o' that back door, Mr. Fenwick, when you came in at t'other." The
Vicar immediately went to the back door, but Sam, of course, was not
to be seen.

"Why should he be hiding if he has done no harm?" said the Vicar.

"He thought it was one of them police. They do be coming here a'most
every day, till one's heart faints at seeing 'em. I'd go away if I'd
e'er a place to go to."

"Have you no place at home, Carry?"

"No, sir; no place."

This was so true that he couldn't tell himself why he had asked the
question. She certainly had no place at home till her father's heart
should be changed towards her.

"Carry," said he, speaking very slowly, "they tell me that you are
married. Is that true?"

She made him no answer.

"I wish you would tell me, if you can. The state of a married woman
is honest at any rate, let her husband be who he may."

"My state is not honest."

"You are not married, then?"

"No, sir."

He hardly knew how to go on with this interrogation, or to ask
questions about her past and present life, without expressing a
degree of censure which, at any rate for the present, he wished to
repress.

"You are living here, I believe, with old Mrs. Burrows?" he said.

"Yes, sir."

"I was told that you were married to her son."

"They told you untrue, sir. I know nothing of her son, except just to
have see'd him."

"Is that true, Carry?"

"It is true. It wasn't he at all."

"Who was it, Carry?"

"Not her son;--but what does it signify? He's gone away, and I shall
see un no more. He wasn't no good, Mr. Fenwick, and if you please we
won't talk about un."

"He was not your husband?"

"No, Mr. Fenwick; I never had a husband, nor never shall, I suppose.
What man would take the likes of me? I have just got one thing to do,
and that's all."

"What thing is that, Carry?"

"To die and have done with it," she said, bursting out into loud
sobs. "What's the use o' living? Nobody 'll see me, or speak to me.
Ain't I just so bad that they'd hang me if they knew how to catch
me?"

"What do you mean, girl?" said Fenwick, thinking for the moment that
from her words she, too, might have had