But her mother would not. In the long silence, looking at her,
slowly--very slowly--Hetty understood. After understanding there
followed another long silence, until Hetty drew herself up against
the bole of the tree and shivered.

"Come back to the house, mother. You had best take my arm."

CHAPTER IX.

Mr. Wesley slept that night at Lincoln, and rode back the next
afternoon, reaching Wroote a little before nightfall. After stabling
the filly he went straight to his study. Thither, a few minutes
later, Mrs. Wesley carried his supper on a tray. He kissed her, but
she saw at once from his manner that he would not talk, that he
wished to be alone.

Hetty and Molly sat upstairs in the dusk of the garret, speaking
little. Molly had exhausted her strength for the while and argued no
more, but leaned back in her chair with a hand laid on Hetty's
forehead, who--crouching on the floor against her knee--drew down the
nerveless fingers, fondled them one by one against her cheek, and
kissed them, thinking her own thoughts.

Downstairs a gloom, a breathless terror almost, brooded over the
circle by the kitchen hearth. They knew of Hetty's probable fate--
the sentence to be pronounced to-morrow; they had whispered it one to
another, and while they condemned her it awed them.

Soon after nine Johnny Whitelamb came in from the fields where for
two hours he had been walking fiercely but quite aimlessly.
Great drops of sweat stood out on his temples, over which his hair
fell lank and clammy. His shoes and stockings were dusted over with
fine earth. He did not speak, but lit his candle and went off to his
bed-cupboard under the stairs.

Before ten o'clock the rest of the family crept away to bed.
Mr. Wesley sat on in his study. This was the night of the week on
which he composed his Sunday morning's sermon. He wrote at it
steadily until midnight.

Next morning, about an hour after breakfast, Mrs. Wesley heard the
hand-bell rung in the study--the sound for which (it seemed to her)
she had been listening in affright for two long days. She went at
once. In the passage she met Johnny Whitelamb coming out.

"I am to fetch Miss Hetty," he whispered with a world of dreadful
meaning.

But for once Johnny was not strictly obedient. Instead of seeking
Hetty he went first across the farmyard and through a small gate
whence a path took him to a duck-pond at an angle of the kitchen
garden, and just outside its hed