ave written to
him three times to tell him that I'm starving, and never a cent has he
given me--and there's no allowance due yet, and when there is they'll
take it, for I owe hundreds."

"Well," said George, "I call it cruel--cruel, and he rolling in gold.
Thirty thousand pounds he hev just made, that I knows on. You must be
an angel, marm, to stand it, an angel without wings. If it were my
husband, now I'd know the reason why."

"Ay, but I daren't. He'd murder me. He said he would."

George laughed gently. "Lord! Lord!" he said, "to see how men play it
off upon poor weak women, working on their narves and that like. He
kill you! Laryer Quest kill you, and he the biggest coward in
Boisingham; but there it is. This is a world of wrong, as the parson
says, and the poor shorn lambs must jamb their tails down and turn
their backs to the wind, and so must you, marm. So it's the workhus
you'll be in to-morrow. Well, you'll find it a poor place; the skilly
is that rough it do fare to take the skin off your throat, and not a
drop of liquor, not even of a cup of hot tea, and work too, lots of it
--scrubbing, marm, scrubbing!"

This vivid picture of miseries to come drew something between a sob
and a howl from the woman. There is nothing more horrible to the
imagination of such people than the idea of being forced to work. If
their notions of a future state of punishment could be got at, they
would be found in nine cases out of ten to resolve themselves into a
vague conception of hard labour in a hot climate. It was the idea of
the scrubbing that particularly affected the Tiger.

"I won't do it," she said, "I'll go to chokey first----"

"Look here, marm," said George, in a persuasive voice, and pushing the
brandy bottle towards her, "where's the need for you to go to the
workhus or to chokey either--you with a rich husband as is bound by
law to support you as becomes a lady? And, marm, mind another thing, a
husband as hev wickedly deserted you--which how he could do so it
ain't for me to say--and is living along of another young party."

She took some more brandy before she answered.

"That's all very well, you duffer," she said; "but how am I to get at
him? I tell you I'm afraid of him, and even if I weren't, I haven't a
cent to travel with, and if I got there what am I to do?"

"As for being afeard, marm," he answered, "I've told you Laryer Quest
is a long sight more frightened of you than you are of him. Then as
for