a state of moroseness
that at times bordered on insanity. He became a fierce hater of women,
and the chief victim of his frenzy was his stepdaughter, Mary Whittaker.

She bore his harshness with a Griselda patience, but this seemed only to
add provocation to his anger. In her he saw the daughter of the woman
who had trodden his pride in the dust, and he marked her out as the
object of his vengeance. Finding that bitter words and deeds of cruelty
left her seemingly unmoved, his morose and wounded spirit devised other
and darker plans of revenge. At first he conceived the idea of driving
her penniless from his doors, but, realising that the girl would find no
difficulty in obtaining a place as servant on one of the neighbouring
farms, he abandoned it as furnishing insufficient satisfaction for his
tortured heart. One day he heard how a farmer had some years before
ignominiously sold by public auction the wife of whom he had grown
tired, and Learoyd gloated over the story with malicious glee. Here was
a means of satisfying his vengeance to the full. To his warped
imagination it mattered little that Mary Whittaker was entirely innocent
of her mother's desertion of him, or that Anne Learoyd, far away in
America, would probably never hear of her daughter's shame. Inasmuch as
the guilty wife was out of his clutch, he was content with the vicarious
sacrifice that he could demand from her daughter.

For some days he brooded over his cruel purpose, and it found ever more
favour in his eyes. Market day came and the time was ripe for action.
Roughly informing his stepdaughter that she must go with him to market,
he left the house with her on foot, carrying a halter in his hand. On
the road he brutally informed her of his purpose. A chill of horror
seized the girl when she heard the news, but her tears and entreaties,
so far from melting his heart, filled him with an unholy joy. As they
passed a farm-house on the road Mary screamed out for help, but Learoyd
silenced her with a blow on the mouth, and then, leaving the high road,
took the path through the fields in order to avoid company. Arriving at
the outskirts of the town, he slipped the halter over her head and
dragged her through the by-streets to the market-place.

Such was Mary's story as told to the weaver that evening in his cottage.
Tom Parfitt was a man of few words, but the tears that rolled down his
cheek showed his sympathy. "Poor lass, poor lass" was his frequent
co