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“Will, lad! what’s come o’er thee?” said she to him, as he sat listlessly gazing into the fire.

“There’s nought the matter with me,” said he, as if annoyed at her remark.

“Nay, lad, but there is.” He did not speak again to contradict her; indeed, she did not know if he had heard her, so unmoved did he look.

“Wouldst like to go to Upclose Farm?” asked she, sorrowfully.

“It’s just blackberrying time,” said Tom.

Will shook his head. She looked at him awhile, as if trying to read that expression of despondency, and trace it back to its source.

“Will and Tom could go,” said she; “I must stay here till I’ve found her, thou knowest,” continued she, dropping her voice.

He turned quickly round, and with the authority he at all times exercised over Tom, bade him begone to bed.

When Tom had left the room, he prepared to speak.

CHAPTER II.

“Mother,” then said Will, “why will you keep on thinking she’s alive? If she were but dead, we need never name her name again. We’ve never heard nought on her since father wrote her that letter; we never knew whether she got it or not. She’d left her place before then. Many a one dies in–“

“Oh, my lad! dunnot speak so to me, or my heart will break outright,” said his mother, with a sort of cry. Then she calmed herself, for she yearned to persuade him to her own belief. “Thou never asked, and thou’rt too like thy father for me to tell without asking–but it were all to be near Lizzie’s old place that I settled down on this side o’ Manchester; and the very day at after we came, I went to her old missus, and asked to speak a word wi’ her. I had a strong mind to cast it up to her, that she should ha’ sent my poor lass away, without telling on it to us first; but she were in black, and looked so sad I could na’ find in my heart to threep it up. But I did ask her a bit about our Lizzie. The master would have turned her away at a day’s warning (he’s gone to t’other place; I hope he’ll meet wi’ more mercy there than he showed our Lizzie–I do), and when the missus asked her should she write to us, she says Lizzie shook her head; and when she speered at her again, the poor lass went down on her knees, and begged her not, for she said it would break my heart (as it has done, Will–God knows it has),” said the poor mother, choking with her struggle to keep down her hard overmastering grief, “and her father would curse her–Oh, God, teach me to be patient.” She could not speak for a few minutes–“and the lass threatened, and said she’d go drown herself in the canal, if the missus wrote home– and so –

“Well! I’d got a trace of my child–the missus thought she’d gone to th’ workhouse to be nursed; and there I went–and there, sure enough, she had been–and they’d turned her out as she were strong, and told her she were young enough to work–but whatten kind o’ work would be open to her, lad, and her baby to keep?”

Will listened to his mother’s tale with deep sympathy, not unmixed with the old bitter shame. But the opening of her heart had unlocked his, and after awhile he spoke –

“Mother! I think I’d e’en better go home. Tom can stay wi’ thee. I know I should stay too, but I cannot stay in peace so near–her– without craving to see her–Susan Palmer, I mean.”

“Has the old Mr. Palmer thou telled me on a daughter?” asked Mrs. Leigh.

“Ay, he has. And I love her above a bit. And it’s because I love her I want to leave Manchester. That’s all.”