id:

"I want _you_ to come down; I don't want to come up."

"Is anything the matter?"

Piers did not answer, and in another minute Joyce was at his side.

"Joyce, there is a woman hiding under the maples and brambles."

"A woman? Perhaps she is one of the women employed on the farm."

"I don't know," said Piers, "I wish you would come and see who it is."

"Very well, dear," Joyce said; "you are sure it is a _woman_?"

"Yes, and she is crying and sobbing."

Joyce followed Piers along the shrubbery path, now covered with a new
layer of fallen leaves, and, at the turn of a still narrower side path,
she saw, half hidden by the brambles and undergrowth, a woman; her head,
bowed upon her hands, and her attitude one of despair.

Joyce went near and said: "What is the matter? Are you in pain? Can I
help you?"

The woman raised her head, and Joyce recognised at once that she was
Susan Priday.

Thoughts of the night on Mendip; of the fierce onslaught made on Gilbert
Arundel by the big giant, and the almost certainty she felt, that the
cruel blow aimed at her father was by the same hand, made Joyce start
back and say, coldly:

"You had better not stay here, these are private grounds."

Piers, who was leaning against the bole of a beech tree, said:

"Yes; get up and go away. I will show you the gate into the road."

"Lady," said the girl, passionately, "I came to see _you_. I saw you
sobbing and crying on the bench yonder, for I got into the plantation
that way. I heard you sob, and call 'Father,' and then my heart nearly
broke, and I came round at the back and got over the hedge. I felt as if
I dare not speak to you. Do you know me, lady?"

"Yes," Joyce said; "of course I see who you are, but I--I cannot do
anything for you, and we are all in great grief, very, very great
grief," Joyce said, with a sudden spasm of agony in her voice.

"I know it, I know it, that's why I came; and I'm in grief, too. Father
is gone away, no one knows where; the boys have run off, and, oh! the
baby is dead. I did think I'd keep him, for mother's sake; but, in a
drunken fit, father threw a pot of boiling water at me. It missed me,
and the baby caught it on his neck and face, and it scalded him
dreadful. The school mistress was kind, and so was Mrs. Amos, she that
owns the farm; but he died--he died--and I am all alone. Oh! Miss, oh!
dear young lady, pity me."

"I do pity you," Joyce said. "But where is your father? For you must b