" she told him, "an' by
the grace of God mine's to be the hand that'll pluck 'ee. You'll be
saved along of your poor old mawther, won't 'ee, dearie?"

Then, as Ishmael showed no disposition to do anything but try and get
away, she caught up a slab of heavy-cake which lay on the dresser. "Thee
mustn't be afeared of thy mawther, my worm," she murmured, her voice
more coaxing than he had ever heard it; "we're gwain before the Lard
hand in hand.... There, take this bit o' food into the yard, but don't
'ee go far. Do 'ee hear what I say, Ishmael?"

He hastened with a submissive "Yes" and then fled, cake in hand. Out in
the yard his little mind struggled in vain with the problem of this
change, for there was no added respect in his mother's treatment of him,
such as his stepping openly into the position of owner of Cloom might
have made. Neither, his child's true instinct told him, was it affection
suddenly awakened in her. He cast about vainly for what it might mean.
Presently he went into the washhouse, where Katie and another woman were
busy; they took scant notice of him, but went on discussing the fact
that Archelaus had not been home to bed all night, had not long come in,
and gone upstairs, where he still was, snoring for all to hear. Ishmael
was not altogether ignorant, and allusions were bandied back and forth
across his head which he was at once too young and too old to hear
unscathed.

Left alone, Annie went upstairs, listened a moment outside the door of
her eldest-born, then went on to the tiny room over the porch that was
Ishmael's. And there, on her knees by the bed, she prayed silently, her
eyes rolling till a slather of white showed beneath each faded iris, her
reddened fingers wringing each other so that patches of pallor sprang
out on them.

Annie was in the midst of a religious crisis that had overwhelmed her
like a typhoon. She was one of those women who must have an outlet for
passion. It had taken merely physical form with her in the days of the
old Squire, but since her elevation to the position of a widow-woman she
had undergone "conversion." What she had hitherto accepted, much as her
farm beasts accepted it--as a clamorous necessity--she now held to be a
thing accursed. Her position was an inconsistent one, as she was quick
to uphold her ill-used righteousness with her neighbours; but that did
not worry Annie, whose mind, blurred and wavering, never faced anything
squarely.

Lawyer Tonkin had