ul."

He put his hand into his waistcoat pocket, and drew out a silver coin.

"Is that yourn, John?"

John fell upon it with a cry.

"Aye, Saunders, it's mine. Look ye 'ere, Isaac, it's a king's 'ead.
It's Willum--not Victory. I saved that 'un up when I wor a lad at
Mason's--an' look yer, there's my mark in the corner--every 'arf-crown
I ever 'ad I marked like that."

He held it under Isaac's staring eyes, pointing to the little scratched
cross in the corner.

"'Ere's another, John--two on 'em," said Saunders, pulling out a second
and a third.

John, in a passion of hope, identified them both.

"Then," said Saunders, slapping the table solemnly, "theer's nobbut one
more thing to say--an' sorry I am to say it. Them coins, Isaac"--he
pointed a slow finger at Bessie, whose white, fierce face moved
involuntarily--"them 'arf-crowns wor paid across the bar lasst night,
or the night afore, at Dawson's, by _yor wife_, as is now stannin'
there, an' she'll deny it if she can!"

For an instant the whole group preserved their positions--the breath
suspended on their lips.

Then Isaac strode up to his wife, and gripped her by the arms.

"Did yer do it?" he asked her.

He held her, looking into her eyes. Slowly she sank away from him; she
would have fallen, but for a chair that stood beside her.

"Oh, yer brute!" she said, turning her head to Saunders an instant, and
speaking under her breath, with a kind of sob. "Yer _brute_!"

Isaac walked to the door, and threw it open.

"Per'aps yer'll go," he said grimly.

And the three went, without a word.

SCENE V

So the husband and wife were left together in the cottage room. The
door had no sooner closed on Saunders and his companions than Isaac was
seized with that strange sense of walking amid things unreal upon a
wavering earth which is apt to beset the man who has any portion of the
dreamer's temperament under any sudden rush of circumstance. He drew
his hand across his brow, bewildered. The fire leapt and chattered in
the grate; the newly-washed tea-things on the table shone under the
lamp; the cat lay curled, as usual, on the chair where he sat after
supper to read his _Christian World_; yet all things were not the same.
What had changed?

Then, across poor John's rifled box, he saw his wife sitting rigid on
the chair where he had left her.

He came and sat down at the corner of the table, close to her, his chin
on his hand.

"'Ow did yer