aughter
died this morning. Yours truly, Mary Smith."

The letter bore the Birmingham postmark, but no other clue.

"We don't even know where she died," sobbed Thomas, "that I may go
and bring her home to bury her," and this thought hurt the poor old
man cruelly.

"If you did know, he probably wouldn't let you have her poor body,
not if he thought you wanted it," cried Patience bitterly. She could
not bring herself to mention her son-in-law by name. "He would hurry
her into her grave rather than she should come back to us," and then
she burst into bitter weeping again.

CHAPTER VI.

TAKEN BY SURPRISE.

After that first outburst of grief, Thomas Dawson did not speak much
of his trouble, but it was none the less deep for that. In fact, it
was so deep, and the wound was such a cruel one, it was almost more
than he could bear.

The thought of his dead daughter never left him. Through the day,
when he was at work, through the long evenings when he sat silent and
sad, gazing into the fire, and through the nights when he lay
sleepless, he brooded over the wrongs his daughter's husband had done
them all, and was full of remorse for his own hard-heartedness--as he
called it now--in not having forgiven her at once when she ran away
from her home. And more than all was he haunted by the thought of
her lonely death after her cruelly hard life. He pictured her lying
in her pauper's grave in an unknown burial-ground, away amongst
strangers, unknown, uncared for, unremembered, and these thoughts
aged him fast.

Jessie was too young to notice it, but those older saw how he began
to stoop, how his feet lagged as he walked, how the colour had faded
from his hair and from the bright blue eyes, which had been such a
noticeable feature of his face. All the life and fun had gone out of
him too; even Jessie could not rouse him.

Patience bore her grief in another way, it was merged to some extent
in her anxiety about her husband. With regard to Lizzie she felt
less anxiety and pain about her now than she had done when Lizzie had
been alive, and living a miserable life with the weak, ne'er-do-well
husband who had been the ruin of her happiness and theirs.
Trouble left its mark on Patience too, she became gentler and
quieter, she seemed to lose some of her strength and spirit, and to
lean more and more on her little granddaughter. And Jessie, pleased
and proud to be useful, and trusted and able to help, turned to wit