into un, man, an' knock his ugly head off!" said Will
encouragingly, and the babe to whom he spoke made renewed efforts as
both combatants tumbled into the road, the devil in their little bright
eyes, each puny muscle straining. Tim had his foe by the hair, and the
elder was trying to bite his enemy's leg, when Martin Grimbal and Chris
Blanchard approached from Rushford Bridge. They had met by chance, and
Chris was coming to the farm while the antiquary had business elsewhere.
Now a scuffle in a cloud of dust arrested them and the woman,
uninfluenced by considerations of sportsmanship, pounced upon Timothy,
dragged him from his operations, and, turning to Will, spoke as Martin
Grimbal had never heard her speak before.

"You, a grawed man, to stand theer an' see that gert wild beast of a
bwoy tear this li'l wan like a savage tiger! Look at his sclowed faace
all streaming wi' blood! 'S truth! I'd like to sarve you the same, an' I
would for two pins! I'm ashamed of 'e!"

"He hit wi' his fistes like a gude un," said Will, grinning; "an' he'm
made o' the right stuff, I'll swear. Couldn't have done better if he was
my awn son. I be gwaine to give un a braave toy bimebye. You see t'other
kid's faace come to-morrow!"

Martin Grimbal watched Chris fondle the gasping Timothy, clean his
wounds, calm his panting heart; then, as though a superhuman voice
whispered in his ear, her secret stood solved, and the truth of
Timothy's parentage confronted him in a lightning flash of the soul. He
looked at Chris as a man might gaze upon a spectre; he stared at her and
through her into her past; he pieced each part of the puzzle to its
kindred parts until all stood complete; he read "mother" in her voice,
in her caressing hands and gleaming eyes as surely as man reads morning
in the first light of dawn; and he marvelled that a thing so clear and
naked had been left to his discovery. The revelation shook him not a
little, for he was familiar with the rumours concerning Tim's paternity,
and had been disposed to believe them; but from the moment of the new
thought's inception it gripped him, for he felt that the thing was true.
As lamps, so ordered that the light of each may fall on the fringe of
darkness where its fellow fades, and thus complete a chain of
illumination, so the present discovery, duly considered, was but one
point of truth revealing others. It made clear much that had not been
easy to understand, and the tremendous fact rose