paid on nothing a week, and something to put in the mouth
besides."

"Gone? Are you mad? Woman, think what you're saying. Gone where?"

"How do I know where? Mad, indeed! I'll not say but other folk look a
mort madder nor ever I looked."

The young woman took her by the shoulder.

"Don't say that--don't say you don't know where they're gone. They've
got my child, I tell you; my poor little Paul.

"Oh, so you're the young party as drowned herself, are you? Well,
they're gone anyways, and the little chit with them, and there's no
saying where. You may believe me. Ask the neighbors else."

The young woman leaned against the door-jamb with a white face and great
eyes.

"Well, well, how hard she takes it. Deary me, deary me, she's not a bad
sort, after all. Well, well, who'd ha' thought it! There, there, come in
and sit awhile. It is cruel to lose one's babby--and me to tell her,
too. Misbegotten or not, it's one's own flesh and blood, and that's what
I always says."

The young woman had been drawn into the house and seated on a chair. She
got up again with the face of an old woman.

"Oh, I'm choking!" she said.

"Rest awhile, do now, my dear--there--there."

"No, no, my good woman, let me go."

"Heaven help you, child; how you look!"

"Heaven has never helped me," said the young woman. "I was a Sister of
Charity only two years ago. A man found me and wooed me; married me and
abandoned me; I tried to die and they rescued me; they separated me from
my child and put me in an asylum; I escaped, and have now come for my
darling, and he is gone."

"Deary me, deary me!" and the old woman stroked her consolingly.

"Let me go," she cried, starting up afresh. "If Heaven has done nothing
for me, perhaps the world itself will have mercy."

The ghastly face answered ill to the grating laugh that followed as she
jerked her head aside and hurried away.

CHAPTER I.

IN THE YEAR 1875.

It was Young Folks' Day in the Vale of Newlands. The summer was at its
height; the sun shone brightly; the lake to the north lay flat as a
floor of glass, and reflected a continent of blue cloud; the fells were
clear to their summits, and purple with waves of heather. It was
noontide, and the shadows were short. In the slumberous atmosphere the
bees droned, and the hot air quivered some feet above the long, lush
grass. The fragrance of new-mown hay floated languidly through a
sub-current of wild rose and honeysuckle. In a mead