When she did not answer, he cried at her, "You don't deny it?"

Now she was looking fully at him.

"No, I don't deny it. Father."

Her boldness seemed to infuriate him and, marching to the desk, he swept a pile of papers aside. Some floated in the air around him while he cried at her, "Do you know you nearly killed a child? If you had had your way and knocked the last wall down you'd have buried a child lying in a basket."

When she made no reply, he stood glaring at her. The fact that she might have killed a child really did not concern him; from what the minister had told him there were ten of them and one less would be taken in the form of a blessing. But that wasn't the point; his daughter, a Fischel, had lowered herself to retaliate against a low squatter. If the act had been done by her brother he could have understood it; but she was a girl, a young woman, and women did not stoop to such things. Her mother, wanton that she was, would not have lowered herself even to address such a person, let alone acknowledge her existence by attacking her. As he continued to stare at his daughter, she began to speak, "I did it to teach her a lesson. It was much less cruel than reporting her and having her sent to prison for striking me." She tapped her finger quickly against her cheek, then glanced at Clive; but he lowered his eyes as she ended, "Also, she and her brother were poaching."

"I know all about that." His voice was rasping.

"The girl told the minister the full facts of the case. She admitted her brother was poaching, but I understand that she also stressed the point that the child was not five years old and that you tied him in his own trap.

What is in you, girl, to do such a thing? "

"She struck me."

As Clive's head came up quickly, her father said,

"The girl says you lifted your walking stick to her and, to prevent your striking her, she tore the stick from your hand and you fell back to the bushes. Is this true?"

"No." Again her eyes flickered towards Clive. And now her father, his voice dropping low in his throat, said, "Then your brother, too, is a liar, because he has already borne out the girl's story.... Now listen to me and listen carefully. I forbid you to go near that girl's habitation again; and if you can't conduct yourself like a lady then I'll have to think up some ways and means of teaching you.... You may go, both of you."

When the door had closed on them he stood looking down at his desk and the papers scattered over the floor. He hesitated to ring for Hatton to pick them up and sat down heavily in his chair and, resting his chin in his hand, slowly began to tap his forefinger on his lips. The girl was going to create trouble; how was he to put up with her? What was the alternative? She was too old for school. Where could he send her? There was only Anna. But no. No, he couldn't imprison her on that stark island in the Hebrides with his austere sister and her wildly ranting husband. No, that would break any spirit;

and he wasn't out to break his daughter's spirit, only to find some means of putting a great distance between them.

The following week it rained every day and in spite of roaring fires, even in the bedrooms, the house retained a dank odor. Some days, so dark was it, the candles had to be lit on the dining table at three o'clock in the afternoon.

So, to alleviate her boredom after dinner, Isabelle went up into the nursery and watched Clive paint;

that was when the light was sufficiently good for him to work, and between times they would sip claret or port or whatever he had been able to appropriate from the cellar. His access to the wine cellar was simple; he merely waited until the servants were at meals, then went to the gun room where the cellar keys hung on a board with others, and let himself into the wine cellar, which was actually the cellar to the house, the door of which opened on to the side of the house. No one, as yet, had seen him come or go; and if there was a noticeable reduction along some shelves, Hatton would suspect Gilbert, and Gilbert, Hat- ton, for the butler and the under-butler were the only two who were allowed access to the cellar.

He had this very morning managed to acquire two bottles, and now at four o'clock on this early October afternoon they were indulging in a mixture of old brandy and port and were feeling warm and very merry.

The sun suddenly making a late appearance, they sprang up and dashed to the window and laughed and shouted like children, and Clive cried, "Lookl Look, the sun. The suni We're back on earth."

"Let's go out."

"It's wet."

"Who cares? I'm hot, boiling inside." She tore at the neck of her dress.

"And your face is red, scarlet." She took his cheeks between her hands and shook his head from side to side; then they fell against each other laughing. But when she pulled him towards the door he dragged his hand from her grasp, saying truculently, "Don't, Belle;

you're always pulling or pushing me. You think I'd never get along on my own, don't you? "

"Damn sure of it."

Again they were hanging on each other laughing, and, her head on his neck, she giggled, "If dear Papa could see us now, he'd have a fit.

What do you think he'd do if he found out? "

"God knows." Clive swung his head from side to side.

"It doesn't bear thinking about. And look," he wagged his finger at her, "we'd better steady up until we get well outside because I wouldn't put it past one of them to split on us. Good job nobody's allowed in here." He turned round and surveyed the room and the bottles and glasses standing on the battered nursery table, and with a dramatic gesture he scoffed, "Master dive's studio, sacrosanct, the garret where he creates his masterpieces, each one stamped with his name, Clive John James ..

Rembrandt . Fischel, Lord of the Manor of Houghton Hall in the County of Durham in the year of God, eighteen thirty-two. Damn me, as ever was. "

Isabelle was now doubled up with her laughter, but when it got overloud Clive warned her, "Sshi or you'll have Mother Hatton up here."

Making an effort to quell her mirth she opened the door saying, "I'll get my cloak," and he whispered, "Here, chew a coffee bean or Nelson will smell it from you."

"It's her ... it's her half-day. She's gone to visit her mama in the illustrious town of Shields, in a house, I understand, from whose windows you can espy the North Sea. Just think of that." He pushed her and she staggered forward but straightened herself at the top of the stairs and descended with exaggerated decorum to the first floor.

But her decorum vanished when, later, they crossed the hall and her laughter brought the butler's gaze on her; and behind his look of slight bewilderment was one of deep dislike. He could stand Master Clive, but the young miss, no. God prevent the day that she should ever be mistress of this house. It wasn't likely;

but still one never knew. If anything should happen to the young master, and him not married, well, then there was only her to follow the master. But God forbid.

He opened the doors for them but did not immediately close them again;

instead, he watched the pair of them skipping across the gravel like hairns let loose to play. They would not have acted like that if the master had been at home; he'd be back the night and that wouldn't be a moment too soon. There was something odd about both of them. He screwed up his eyes. If he didn't know it was impossible he would imagine they had been drinking. Master Clive had had three glasses of wine with his dinner, but as usual she had had none. Yet they were acting very strange, very strange.

They acted very strange across the park and to the North Lodge and through the gate to Thornton's Farm. The farmer was at market, but his wife thought the young master and miss were very skittish- like, merry, going on as if they were at a fair, leaning over the stiles and pulling the pigs' tails. Did you ever see anything like it? But, of course, she daren't say anything. If they had been her own son and daughter she would have clouted their ears and ski ted them across the yard. When they saw the cows being milked they went on as if they'd never seen teats pulled afore, the young miss worse than the master.

It was almost two years since they had visited the farm;

and if they had acted childishly then she could have understood it, but not now, when they were a young gentleman and miss.

She was glad when they left, and she went to the gate and watched them going down the road, the girl running and skipping on and off the grass verge like a young lamb when the sun first touches it.

Isabelle would not, at the moment, have likened her feelings to those of a lamb. A mixture of emotions was whirling round inside her: a feeling of excitement, a strong desire to tease, to have fun, but above all, and not fully understood by her, an overpowering urge to come to grips with someone, to master someone besides Clive.

At this point they came to a part of the road that merged with the fell itself, and to the left of them the land sloped to a grassy hollow, at the bottom of which was a mound of earth bordered by a small copse; and towards this Isabelle now ran, with Clive close behind her.

Running between the mound of earth and the copse was a long narrow pathway, probably made by sheep, and coming along it now was the girl who had hardly been out of her thoughts for days. In one hand she was carrying a milk can, and behind her was a small child.

They all seemed to stop at the same instant and remain still for some seconds. It was Isabelle who made the first move. Wagging her walking stick in front of her, and curling her lip as if she were confronting a reptile, she exclaimed in chilling tones, "Out of the wayl" The track was too narrow to allow two people to pass. Cissie was within two yards of the end of it;

there was more than twenty yards behind her. She was in her right to go forward into the open. But she would have gone back except for the fact that the girl demanding she should do this was the one who had smashed the dwelling place and nearly killed Nellie;

she was the one who had tied the wire around Joe's ankle; she was a wicked creature. Her da had always said, "A danger faced is a danger halved." She said now in a small but clear voice, "I'm near the end, I'm just a step off; if you'd move back I..."

"What! Move for you?" The point of the walking stick caught her in the middle of the chest and sent her staggering back, almost upsetting Sarah.

"Look. Go on back. It'll save you a lot of trouble." It was the young man speaking now over his sister's shoulder. His face was red, and he was laughing.

"I'll not." She did not look past the girl to the young man but kept her eyes fixed on the dark glaring face as she cried, "I'm in me rights. And another thing. Don't you poke me no more with that stick, I'm tellin' you."

"Rights? How dare you!" The stick came up and the milk can went flying. Then for the second time within days Cissie was struggling with the girl for possession of the walking stick.

Isabelle was stronger than Cissie; also she had the advantage of being well fed; but Cissie's thinness was a tough thinness bred of hard work and privation, and so they struggled equally for the moment while, behind them, Sarah cried, "Give over! Give overi Eehl our Cissie. Our Cissie." And behind Isabelle, Clive, backing into the open, laughed until his sides ached. That was until, still struggling, they came abreast of him and he saw the look on his sister's face. She was holding the stick no longer and her hands were clawing at the girl's neck.

Crying at her, "Belle! Bellel Let upl" he tried to push himself in between them. Then one of them slipped. He thought, afterwards, that it was the girl, for when they all fell together she was on her back, he on top of her, and Belle to the side.

The girl didn't move; she seemed stunned. Nor did he move, for he too was stunned, but in a different way. One of his hands was partly under the girl's armpit and partly on her heaving breast, but the other was actually gripping the flesh of her bare leg well above the knee. He glanced sideways to see the skirt and single petticoat rumpled up almost to the thighs. His glance at the same time took in Isabelle leaning against a tree, and he saw that the rage on her face had been taken over by a fiendish mixture of laughter and glee; and as if reading his thoughts she cried, "Well!

Why don't you? Go on. "

Unconsciously, his hand had been moving along the girl's bare flesh and upwards, but it stopped when the body beneath him drew in a deep shattering breath. He looked at the face under his and saw it for a moment through the artist's eye. The skin was beautiful, the lashes on the closed eyes silken; the lips slightly open were moist. An unbearable feeling was tearing at his loins. His body was hot as it in a fever;

he felt that if he didn't have release from this agony he would die.

He must. He must. His sister's voice jerked his head round to her again as she cried, "Go on! Why don't you? You're frightened. You never have, have you?"

"Go away. Do you hear? Go away."

She made a sound like a laugh and moved from the tree, but as soon as he turned his head from her she stopped and she did not take her eyes off the figures on the ground, not even when the child came running from the track, crying, "Our Cissiel Our Cissiel Eehl Ohi Don't l" then stood some distance away wailing like a banshee.

It was the exploring hand and the contact of strange warm flesh that brought Cissie back to consciousness. One second she didn't know where she was, the next she was screaming aloud; and for minutes she tore and struggled with the body, first in an effort to escape, then for no apparent purpose. After that, life seemed to flow from her and she lay still, like one dead. Her eyes wide, tear-bleared, she stared upwards, conscious of the fair head nestled in the crook of her neck; but she had no energy now to push the body from her. Not even when she heard the terrible voice thundering as if God himself were speaking and the sound of a whiplash flicking through the air did she move. She only knew that the body was lifted from her as if a mighty hand had swept it aside as it would a fly. She closed her eyes tightly against an indescribable pain, not in her body now but in her heart; and when she opened them again it was to see a man standing above her. He was tall and unbending and his face was a dark bluish red; in one hand he held a whip and in the other the young man, who was trying desperately to adjust his clothes.

Her hands fumbling, she pushed down her skirt and petticoat and rolled on to her face; and when some minutes later she dragged herself to her knees there was nobody near her, only Sarah. When she got to her feet she turned her head sideways and looked towards the road where the coach was starting up. Then she picked up the milk can; she did not go towards the farm but turned in the direction whence she had come and Sarah followed her, some paces behind, not daring to speak and still crying.

If Lord Fischel had ever been in doubt as to the devil walking the earth he was no longer so, for he was assured now that the devil was in full possession of his daughter.

That his son should take his pleasure with a girl of the people was not out of order--the needs of the flesh must be met. God made allowances for that; and that was one of the services the common people provided; but that he should take her in the open, and in view of the road, was to be wholly condemned. Even in such acts as this acertain amount of decorum was to be observed. But that his daughter should stand and witness the process touched on something so unnatural, so evil that his very bowels churned when he thought of it.

He stared at her now, her eyes as black as coals, her face white, showing up the red weal where his whip had caught her, and he could not prevent himself from bringing his hand up and across her other cheek with such force that she staggered and flopped into the big leather chair to the side of the study window. Glaring down at her now, he hissed through thin tight lips, "You're scum, Miss, scum, and you must be treated as such. Your unnatural action today has settled your future for you; you'll go to your Aunt Anna's in Scotland and there you will remain until you are civilized enough to return to decent society."

"No! No!" She pulled herself on to the edge of the chair. One hand still covering her face and all the dark, fiery spirit going out of her, she begged, "Please; no, not to Aunt Anna's, please. Father. I'll I'll behave. It was because we had been drinking ..."

"You had whati" "We ... we got some wine from the cellar." She did not lay the entire blame of this on Clive.

"We ... we did not know what we were doing."

"You knew what you were doing when you took your horse and knocked the walls down of that girl's abode; you knew what you were doing when you tied her young brother to the trap; you know what you're doing today also. You could have stopped such action;

you are stronger than he in all ways. "

She was on her feet now, pleading no more.

"I'll not go to Scotland;

it'll be like going to my grave. That, that barren island . I warn you. Father, I won't go. "

He turned from her and rang a bell; then looking at her over his shoulder he said, "You'll go. You'll go by coach and you'll leave the day after tomorrow in the care of Hatton and his wife. I'm sending a messenger on in the morning to give notice to your aunt." He did not for a moment consider whether his sister would be pleased to have her niece, he only knew that he would make it so worth her while that in her straitened circumstances--her father had left her nothing in his will--it would be foolish of her to refuse. Moreover, having no children of her own, she'd likely welcome someone on whom she could inflict her doctrine of virtue through austerity.

He said to Hatton when he appeared in the doorway, "Tell Mrs. Hatton that Miss Isabelle is to be locked in her room and that she must take her meals to her. You'll also tell her to dismiss her maid. I will give her a fortnight's wages in lieu of notice, together with a reference; you will find them on my desk in the morning.... And, Hatton"

"Yes, m'Lord?"

"Be prepared to escort my daughter to Scotland the day after tomorrow.

Mrs. Hatton will accompany you. "

He turned and looked at his daughter, her hands to her throat as if struggling for breath, but he felt not the slightest pity for her.

On the morning following Isabelle's departure Clive was summoned to his father's study; and when he came and stood in front of his desk, Lord Fischel wanted to rap out, "Stand up straight, boyl" but refrained because he knew they would straighten him up where he was going. What he said to him was, "Have a small valise packed and be ready to leave in half-an-hour's time."

Clive wet his lips before he asked quietly, "May I inquire. Sir, where I am going?"

"You may. You're bound for Newcastle; from there you will be heading for the Cape, East Indies, and Malaya. Where you go after that depends on Captain Spellman's charter. You will be sailing on the Virago;

your position will be that of a deck hand. But many a man has risen from there to captain; it will be entirely up to you. "

For a moment he thought his son was going to collapse over the desk in front of him, and he was forced to say by way of some comfort, "Captain Spell- man is a good man, just and honest; he is one of the best captains in the Compton Line, in which line, you may know, we hold a great many shares."

"Fa ... Father."

"Yes?"

"I'm always unwell on the sea, I don't like the sea. Would it not be possible for you to send me somewhere else?"

Lord Fischel looked at his son and there was a sadness within him.

There was no fight in the boy; it was as he had always known, their natures had got mixed up. It was strange, too, he thought, that he had whipped his daughter in passion on that hillside, and in this room, passion dead, he had struck her; yet when he had brought his son before him that same night he had not lifted his hand to him. He had even considered not heaping any retribution on the boy other than sending him back to school; yet he had told himself that would be unjust. He did not own to himself at that point the real reason why he was sending him and his sister away.

It wasn't until late in the afternoon when the tide was full that he stood on the quay in Newcastle in a position from which he would not be observed and watched the Virago, her sails set, her deck alive with scurrying figures, pass down the river; and his heart knew a strange loneliness that brought the truth to the forefront of his mind. Yet still he did not face it squarely and admit that by his supposed justice he had rid himself of their presence for some years ahead, and also made sure that neither of tliem would encounter their mother; but he looked upon their departure and the incidents that led up to it as the workings of God in answer to his unspoken prayers God had ways of protecting and assisting those who obeyed his commandments.

BOOK THREE

The Child

"Do you hear what I said. Jimmy?"

"N ... No, Matthew."

"I was tellin' you, lad, why we soak the nave of the wheel in boiling water. Now look. Jimmy." Matthew went on his hunkers before the boy.

"You've got to pay attention else you'll never learn this trade, not in seven years or seventeen. You were as eager as a calf after milk at first but something's come over you. You tired of it?"

"Oh, no! No, man ... I mean Matthew." Jimmy shook his head and his face worked as if he were pulling himself out of a dream.

"Why, no, Matthew, I'm not tired of it; I like it fine, nothin' better. I'm sorry, Matthew, I didn't pay attention. I will after this, I will.

I.

I heard what you said about getting the dish of the wheel, like testing the mort ices for it, an' I remember what you told me about the dowels yesterday. "

"But memory isn't enough. Jimmy lad, if you don't put your rememberin' into your hands.... You know, I spoilt a spoke this morning on the bench 'cos you didn't crank the wheel hard enough. Now you've got to take a pull at yourself.... Aw" he put his hand on to the boy's shoulder "There's no need for you to bubble. Lord, I'm only tellin' you, and quietly;

I haven't clouted your ear or anythin'. "

When Jimmy turned away and hid his face in the crook of his elbow and his shoulders began to heave, Matthew pulled him gently towards him again and said quietly, "Look, something's wrong with you. Tell me what it is. Has me mother been getting' at you?"

Jimmy shook his head at this, but when, after a pause, Matthew asked, "Is ... is something wrong up there?" Jimmy's head didn't move and after a longer pause Matthew made himself say, "Is it Cissie?"

The boy's head now drooped further on to his chest and the tears ran off the end of his nose and on to the back of his hand, but he said nothing; and Matthew, getting to his feet, put his hand on the boy's shoulder and led him into a small store room that led off the shop, and there, closing the door behind him, he looked down at him and said grimly, "Look, Jimmy, I know Cissie's unhappy." He stopped himself from adding, "She's not the only one," and went on.

"But she's young and she'll get over it. You see ... well" --he rubbed his hand hard across his mouth"--there's things you don't understand, things a man has to do but...."

Jimmy, sniffing the tears back off his nose with the aid of his thumb, said quickly now, "

"Tisn't you, Matthew, 'tisn't you." When he paused, staring into Matthew's face, Matthew asked quietly, "Well, if it isn't me, what is it?"

Jimmy drew his bottom lip right into his mouth and scraped the teeth over the skin until his lip sprang from under them with a painful sucking snap, and then he put his hand to his head and held it there before he said, "She was mated."

Matthew hadn't heard aright. He said, "What did you say?"

"She was mated." The words were a whisper but Matthew's shoulders drew back from them. His chin pulled in to his neck, his hand came up and his fingers ran through his thick hair. His mouth opened to speak then closed again, and Jimmy said, between sniffs, "It was as her and Sarah were goin' for the milk. She met up with the lady from the Hall--she was the one who had caught Joe nabbin' the rabbit and brought her horse and kicked down the walls-and the young master and it was in sage going round the butt near Thornton's Farm. And she tells Cissie to go back and out of the way, and they were nearly in the openin' and when Cissie wouldn't she took her stick to her, an' Cissie tried to get it away and the young master got in at ween them and him and Cissie fell, and Sarah said Cissie lay still ... an' then...." Jimmy's eyes lowered, his head drooped, and his voice had a thin, faraway, unreal sound as he ended, "He mated her, and the young miss laughed, and our Cissie cries nearly every night."

Matthew sat down on a box and looked over Jimmy's head to the row of saws and tools hanging on the wall. He had the appearance of a man who had been winded. It was fully five minutes before he said to the boy who was standing looking at him in bewilderment now, "When did this happen?"

"More than a week since but I didn't know till Sunday. She's different, Matthew, quiet, and not bothering about putting the walls up now."

Matthew rose slowly to his feet, then went through the shop and into the yard. After he had harnessed the horse to the cart he went back to the shop door and said to Jimmy, "When Walter comes back tell him I've been called out an' I won't be long. You sweep out, then clean the stable ... right?"

When he drew the horse to a stop on the track below the cave there was no sign of anyone about, but when he walked through the doorway of the half walls he saw her. She was sitting in the corner sorting mushrooms. Nellie in the basket to one side of her and Annie and Charlotte at the other.

Her glance met his for a fleeting second but in that time the whiteness of her face took on a flush. He stood for a moment looking at her bent head, and when the children scampered to him and clung round his legs he lifted Annie up in his arms. But still looking at Cissie, he said, "Hello there."

"Hello." Her voice sounded throaty as if she had a cold.

,

He groped in his pocket now and brought from it a thin strip of barley sugar and, snapping it in two, he gave one piece to Annie and the other to Charlotte and, putting Annie down, he said to Charlotte, "Go to the bum and find me a lucky pebble. It must be a big one mind, flat, brown, and shiny, and if you find it there's a ha' penny for you."

Charlotte's eyes sprung wide and she made an ecstatic high noise like a whistle; then, grabbing Annie's hand, she ran out of the enclosure, and he was left alone with Cissie.

As he drooped on to his hunkers in front of her her hands went on sorting the mushrooms, the broken ones into a basin, the big flat ones into one straw skiff, the button ones into another; and as he watched her. Jimmy's tale formed a picture in his mind and he saw the whole thing happening to her; and his teeth, grinding against each other, made an audible noise. He did not ask himself how he was going to broach the subject to her, he had never been one for beating around the bush; he said thickly, "Jimmy told me."

His words acted like a spring, for she bounced up from the ground and ran into the cave, and he sat still on his hunkers gazing at the mushrooms for a moment before he straightened up and followed her.

Standing in the doorway, he looked to where she was sitting on the low, wooden bed, her hands under her oxters, her body swaying back and forwards, and he said to her, his voice still a mutter, "Don't worry, he'll be brought to boot. If it's the last thing I do he'll be brought to boot. Lord's son or no Lord's son that he is."

Her body stopped its rocking; her eyes now held fear, but her voice was harsh as she said, "

"Tis none of your business, leave it be.

"Tis none of your business."

"It's got to be somebody's business."

"Well, 'tisn't yours." She got up from the bed and went to push past him, but his hand on her shoulder checked her, and he said quietly, "No, perhaps it isn't. But who'll take it on if not me?"

She held his gaze as she replied, her voice calm and flat sounding, " " Tis not your place, and you'll only meet trouble if you make it your business. "

"That's my look-out," he said; then, taking his hand from her shoulder, he went before her into the enclosure again and, looking about him, spoke as if giving orders back in the shop, saying, "Get as many stones as you can up here afore Saturday, an' I'll bring Jimmy and Walter over with me. By Sunday night, given luck, we should have them up and a roof over. Now do what I tell you." He turned towards her where she was standing in the opening of the cave, her hands gripped between her breasts.

"Put them all on and make as big a pile as you can."

She did not answer him, just stared at him, her head moving slightly from side to side; and he turned from her and went down the slope and got into the cart again and drove the two miles to Parson Hedley's vicarage. Young Martin let him in. Martin had once been a climbing boy and he had a mass of burn scars to prove it, but he smiled happily at Matthew; and as he went to inform his master of the visitor's presence Parson Hedley came into the hallway from a far door. Seeing Matthew, he said with evident pleasure, "Matthew, what brings you here at this time?" then added, "Nothing wrong I hope? Your father? Has he taken a turn ... ?"

"No, Parson, nothing like that; they're all well. I just wanted a word with you."

"Certainly, Matthew, certainly. Just come in here." He led the way into a poorly furnished unheated room, saying, "Sit yourself down. Now would you like a cup of tea? Mrs. Hedley makes one about this time."

"No, thank you, Parson; it's not long since me dinner." Matthew had sampled the parson's tea. It was what he called faint tea, too weak to climb out of the pot, but that he should offer tea to six of them when they were at their class showed the mettle of the man--for his stipend, he understood, was ten shillings a week, and he knew for acertainty a third of that went in coppers and sixpences to those in need. It was a crying shame, when one gave it a thought, that a man like Parson Hedley was worth but ten shillings a week, out of which he had to keep up this rambling cold barn of a house, while Parson Bainbridge not four miles away got a pound and lived on the fat of the land. But then the Fischel Manor came into his parish as did the Conways and the Bentleys, and them well up in trade. And it was said, although he couldn't believe it, that the Bishop of Durham received over fifteen thousand pounds a year.

"Now how can I help you, Matthew? Have you got stuck somewhere?"

"No, Parson, nothin' like that." Matthew smiled as he spoke.

"I've done me composition, although" --he jerked his head"--the spelling beats me now and again."

"It beats us all, Matthew."

Matthew now nipped his cheek between his thumb and fingers and rubbed hard at the stubble on it before he said, "It's Cissie Brodie, Parson.

Something's happened her. "

"Oh! Cissie." The parson nodded his head, then looked down to the floor to the side of him.

"You know about it, Parson?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm afraid I do, Matthew."

"What's to be done then?"

Parson Hedley rose to his feet and began to walk up and down as he talked.

"What could be done has been done, Matthew. It isn't often that justice comes out of such affairs as this, but Lord Fischel is a just man. He may be somewhat unapproachable but he's a just man, a man of principle, and he has proved

Matthew also got to his feet.

"He's ... he's going to do something for her then?"

Parson Hedley stopped in his walk, his eyebrows moving upwards.

"For Cissie, no; but he has punished those responsible. It's a wonder you haven't heard. He has banished both his son and his daughter. For her part in the affair, and it was a shocking part indeed, she has been sent to the tar Hebrides, to a relative there I understand. As for his son, he himself saw him signed up as a deck hand on a sailing vessel going to the Far East, to trade there. You must admit, Matthew, that it is very rarely that justice for the poor is carried to such lengths. But there, you cannot hope to please everyone for I understand that he is now being condemned harshly in some circles; for this kind of incident, as you know, is usually taken as a matter of course."

Yes, Matthew knew this was only too true, and although in a way he was very glad that Lord Fischel had got rid of his daughter, for she had become like a bad omen to Cissie, there was still the possibility that there might be results of the incident; and what then? And this is what he said to Parson Hedley, straight and right to the point.

"What if she has a baim, Parson?"

"Oh, Matthew, Matthew." Parson Hedley closed his eyes and wagged his head.

"Don't contemplate such a result with six of them there still to see to. It would be disastrous. And up there on that barren place. If they all survive the winter it will be nothing short of a miracle."

"I'm with you there. Parson; and I say again, what's to be done if she's got with a child? The House should be held responsible."

"Oh no! No, Matthew." Parson Hedley looked somewhat surprised that Matthew, whom he found so practical and level-headed, should be naive enough to imagine that the House of Fischel would hold itself responsible for the result of a moment's amusement by one of its members. The head of that House had already done something unprecedented; no man would dare to ask more of him, and certainly not under such circumstances. At the moment, he was much more sorry for His Lordship than he was for Cissie, for had this good God-fearing man not only lost his wife through sin and not of his own making, but his two children also through sin.

He said on a lighter note as Matthew turned from him towards the door, "I had a wonderful surprise yesterday. What do you think my brother sent me from London?"

Matthew didn't answer for a moment; he was angry inside, boiled up, as he put it to himself. But he must speak civilly to the parson for he was a good man.

"I've no idea," he said.

"A cask of butter?"

"Hoi a cask of butter. No; something much more valuable to me than a cask of butter. Look." He darted back to his desk and, picking up a book, held it out towards Matthew, saying, "A new edition of The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson by James Boswell."

"Oh, that's very nice. Sir."

"This time next year, Matthew, or even before at the rate you're going, you'll be able to sit down and read that entire book; and I promise that when you're ready I will loan it to you. Now, won't that be wonderful?"

"Yes, yes, indeed, Parson."

As Matthew walked away Parson Hedley stood for a moment at the door and watched him, thinking, He's a strange young man, Matthew. The promise of the loan of this precious book hadn't really excited him;

he was more concerned about Cissie at the moment. It was right, of course, to think of other people, to be concerned for their welfare, but he should not be concerned about Cissie Brodie to the extent that it should worry him, for was he not betrothed to Rose Watson of the Mill, and this alliance had made everyone happy.

The third morning that Cissie felt sick she knew it was not from an overindulgence either of mushrooms or of turnips or of the sour hard apples that Joe had brought back after his scrounging expedition. She lay on her side with Annie tucked into her back and Charlotte's arm over Annie touching her waist. In the dim morning light she looked down on Nellie curled up in her basket against the wooden platform, and she thought. Dear God! she'll be just two when it comes.

The knowledge that she was actually pregnant was no surprise to her.

From the day following the nightmarish experience she had known this would be the outcome, and from that moment she had known her life was blighted. No man would ever have her now, not even when she had finally got them all off her hands when she was twenty or twenty-two.

She would have said that there had been no hope in her before this happened that Matthew wouldn't marry Rose Watson, but would, in spite of the dragging responsibility, take her, together with the lot of them. She had pictured him, unable to do without her, dashing over the fells in the cart and saying to her, saying to them all, "Get yourselves in, I'm taking you out of this place, I'm taking you home." But not now, with a baim inside her.

Yet he had done more for her during the past month than he had done in the previous four. Hadn't ?

In fact, it was as near a real house as you could wish, with a fireplace in it and a rough mantel above; and he had done the roof so well with thatch that not a drop of rain came through, even when it poured. And last week he had brought them a bundle of old sacks from the mill to make into towels, and a large thick clip pie mat. She had sent that she always thought of Rose Watson as she but it was a godsend, because the children could sit on it near the fire and keep warm.

She got quietly out of bed, and pulled on her boots over her bare feet. Her body felt heavy, but she knew it wasn't the child, it was the weight of her heart. She was weary and sick, both mentally and physically, at the prospect ahead of her, but strangely she was no longer afraid. There were only two things, she realized that had ever made her fearful: one was the separation of the family, the other was the daughter of the lord.

She had thought, at first, that the fear the girl bred in her was because of her power to do something to Joe, such as having him locked up for poaching, and she could have done that quite easily, because all the gentry were locking them up now since the law had come down on them for setting spring guns and gin traps in the woods; for not only were the poachers killed or maimed, but innocent folk were too. But the fear had really consumed her with a paralyzing force on the day when she felt the girl's hands at her throat, and then, later, when she awakened to a different kind of terror to know that she had not only let that thing happen but also watched it.

Her da had a saying about evil. He said that God put it into the hearts of some men so that, through it, saints could be sorted from the sinners. Well, God had certainly put evil into the heart of the lord's daughter, but who was to say that it had made of herself either a saint or a sinner? The only thing certain was that from now on she would be marked.

She reminded herself that it was Sunday. She looked at the clock standing alone on the mantel shelf. Matthew had brought it back the day after he had put the roof on.

The clock said fifteen minutes past eight; the boys would be here by nine. She wondered what she would give William the day. She hoped he'd bring some oatmeal; it gave them a start with something warm in them in the morning and it saved her fourpence a week.

She opened the door and stood on the threshold looking at the morning as she wound her long plaits round on the back of her head. The fells lay before her, lonely, bleak, and desolate, yet beautiful to her because, as she put it, they were clean; and this morning they looked fresh, for a frost had clothed them in a film of silver; and the sun, breaking through low cloud, made the land sparkle and seem to move like a body pulsing below a skin.

Up till recently such a morning as this, when the world was quiet and the air biting, would have filled her with joy, for right back to when she was a small child she had been aware of joy. It had come to her in many ways: walking in the snow, holding her da's hand and he pointing to the stars and saying, "What do you think about them for Jack, Jack shine-your- lights?" And lying in bed among the warm snuggled bodies of her brothers and sisters while listening to the wind howling down the chimney and the gale blowing outside; and the times of supreme joy, all the more precious because they were rare, when on the table was a piece of meat big enough to slice with the gully. Joy came in all forms, but she doubted at this moment if she'd ever feel joy again. She turned swiftly away from the bright morning and went inside.

Just after nine the boys came panting over the hills, both carrying sacks, and the children raced to meet them and to take possession of the sacks over the last few yards of the journey.

"Hello, Cissie."

"Hello, Cissie."

Jimmy and William stood before her and she made herself smile at them, saying, "Hello, Jimmy. Hello, William. How is it?"

"Oh, fine," they both said together.

"Look! Look what I've brought." William retrieved one of the sacks from Bella; and as he opened it he glanced up at Cissie, saying, "By!

Miss, she's kind, she's good; she stuffs me. Aw. " His head drooped for a moment and his hands became still on the sack, and Cissie said, " I'm glad of that. Eat all you can. "

He looked up at her again, a half-apologetic smile on his face as he said lamely, "Aye. Aye, I will, Cissie. But look." He held up something unwieldy wrapped in a piece of paper and then, like a magician, he tore the paper away to disclose a large ham bone with a good deal of meat still adhering to it.

"Oh myl" "Oh, look, Cissiel" "Oh, our William!"

"Wait; you've seen nothin'." He next drew out a raised pie, exclaiming, "It's full of meat." And these wonders now kept them silent for a moment.

During this time Jimmy had been standing with his hand on the other sack, and when the children turned to it, William said off-handedly, "Oh, there's only bread in there." And Cissie repeated to herself, "Only bread" ; and she looked at Jimmy and he at her.

Jimmy never brought anything as he had said to Cissie, "Matthew's mother seemed to weigh even the water" and at this time on a Sunday morning he always felt out of it. Although he knew he was bringing Cissie sixpence a week more than their William, he still had the feeling that he wasn't contributing as much as his younger brother.

But this morning he had something to give Cissie, something that would hearten her and, if it came off, give her one less to feed.

When the excitement was over and the food put away, and the children running and jumping ahead of them over the fells towards the wood, he walked by Cissie's side as she carried Nellie in her arms; and after a while he said, "I've got something to tell you, Cissie."

The pause in her step caused him to alter his stride and he looked up at her face, which was white even with the wind blowing cold, and he went on, "I think I've got a place for our Bella."

"Oh?" She stopped and looked down at him, and he nodded at her.

"It sort of come about by Matthew making the cart, you know the new cart for the coal man in Shields. Well, this chap, he gets round the big houses in Westoe, and in one of the houses he hears they want a third laundry maid. It's a big house- well, you can tell, 'cos with three in the laundry--an' Bella could stand a chance. An' she would be trained.

I'd told him and his missis about you an' us all when he took us in for a sup of tea the first time I went down, an' I told them our Bella was the next one for work, an' that she was going on eight an' a big lass. An' that's how it came about. You've got to take her down the morrow to the big house to see. "

She now put her hand on Jimmy's shoulder and pulled him to her, and for a moment he forgot he was a working man of ten years old and he put his arms about her and hid his head in her waist, and it was as they stood like this that she thought. There's no one of them like Jimmy. And it was then that she decided to tell him.

They were walking on again, he with his head slightly bent now, when she said, "Your news couldn't have come at a better time. Jimmy, 'cos I've got something' to tell you an' all."

He turned and looked at her now; but again she was looking ahead, and when she said simply, "I think I'm going to have a hairn. Jimmy," he stopped dead and let her walk on.

When she turned towards him and saw the look on his face she shook her head, saying, "

"Tisn't my fault, you know that; 'tisn't my fault."

Aye, he knew it wasn't her fault, but he was recalling a memory, faint, yet not so faint, for it had happened two years back when the women of the hamlet had thrown stones at Aggie Holland because she was havin' a baim and had no man. He hadn't really understood it then, only that they said she enticed the men at the hay making but he remembered them stoning her. She left her mother's house and he hadn't heard her name mentioned since.

He was walking by her side again, his head bent deeply now, when he said, "How will you manage?"

"Somehow," she answered.

"I'll have to, won't I?" And to this he replied, "Aye."

They had gone some distance farther on when he asked tentatively, "Can I... should I ... well, what I mean is, do you want me to tell Matthew?"

She had told him because she wanted him to tell Matthew. Although she couldn't put it into words, her silence spoke for her.

"Are you stark staring mad altogether? Do you want to potch your chance?"

Matthew had just come in the door and taken his coat off and was about to put it on the nail. Turning and looking at his mother, he asked, "What do you mean? What chance?"

"Don't you come the simpleton with me." She was standing close to him now, her words low.

"You know what I mean. You've been over the fells again, haven't you?"

He put his coat on the nail without taking his eyes from her.

"Yes, I've been over the fells again. Now what are you going to make of that?"

"I've said it, you're stark, staring mad unless" --she paused and screwed up her eyes"--you think it's your duty to go."

He surveyed her for a moment.

"Me duty?"

"Aye, that's what I said, your duty." There was a long pause before she ended, "I hear she's goin' to have a hairn."

The flesh on his cheekbones whitened with the tension of his jaws, the natural fresh color of his face deepened; but she wasn't warned or deterred by the signs, for she went on, "Well, it would be no surprise to anybody for miles, would it, because you're never off her doorstep or her cave step, which is more like it. And the fantastic tale goin' on the wind about her being' taken down by the young master of Fischel;

why, that's a midsummer's imagining if ever I heard one. "

When his hand shot out and gripped her shoulder, she started and shrunk from him and spluttered, "Leave go of me! What's come over you?"

"Do you know something?" His square face was close to her long, thin one.

"There's times I've asked me self however you became me mother. Do you know that?"

He watched the expression in her eyes change, and for the first time in his life he knew he had hurt her, but he went on, "You're a mean creature. Inside and out you're mean. And your mother's mean, and your sister's mean, you're all mean; and you've crushed me dad for years.

But there's one thing I'm goin' to tell you, you're not goin' to crush me. I'm not wearin' the breeches just to cover me loins. Now, you understand thati An' don't try to take them off me. You drive me too far and I warn you, I'll do what I threatened afore, I'll bring her here with the lot of them, into this house, and you'll put up with it, or get out. "

He released her with a thrust of his hand and she fell against the wall. And she stayed there as if stunned, while he tucked in the neck of his shirt and rolled up his sleeves and poured water into the wooden bowl. When he had dried himself on the hessian towel hanging from a nail by the window and turned to leave the scullery, she said, "Wait a minute" ; and when he looked at her over his shoulder, she went on, her tone slightly modified now, "I only said what I did for your own good, for you should know that Rose has got wind of it. She was over here not an hour since quizzing, talking about going over to see the poor starving hairns for herself. But it isn't the starving hairns she wants to see, it's her."

He made no answer but went through the kitchen, his grandmother's and his aunt's eyes following him, then up the stairs and into his father's room.

His father seemed to be waiting for him, but then he always looked like that, lost, lonely. He stood for a moment looking down at him before saying, "No matter what you heard, I didn't give it to her."

"I wouldn't blame you if you had, lad."

At this the fire went out of him, and he turned away and walked to the little window and looked down on the village street; and when his father said, "Lying here you get a sort of second sight, and I know that you're only taking on Rose because of what goes with her, but your heart isn't in it, else you wouldn't have waited this long."

Matthew bit hard on his lower lip and closed his eyes tight.

"What's she like, the young one?"

What was Cissie like? A bright spring morning, a wood carpeted with anemones, spelling purity. Purity? Not anymore. But that wasn't her fault. He saw the bloom of her skin, the softness of her lips and the depths of her eyes, and the heart and the spirit of her that struggled against adversity and fended for nine children on that wind-ravaged land.

He turned towards the bed, his shoulders hunched,

his arms hanging limp, his head slightly bowed, and answered, "She's a fine lass" ; then he went out.

When he entered the mill yard his shoulders were back, his head up and his chin thrust out. The miller was at the pulley, and he turned his head in Matthew's direction; and perhaps it was because his hands were occupied that he did not raise one as was usual and wave a greeting instead of shouting above the clatter and creaking of the sails.

Matthew tapped on the door as he entered the kitchen, and Rose Watson turned from lighting the lamp, looked at him, then turned back to the lamp again and adjusted the glass before saying, "Hello there. What brings you the night?"

He walked slowly to the other side of the table so that he could face her, and when she looked at him, he said, "I've something to say to you. Rose."

"Aye? Yes. Well then, sit down." She pointed to a rocking chair to the side of the blazing fire, and he said, "I'll sit after if I may; I want to get this thing clear first. You came to the house this afternoon and had a natter with Mother."

"Yes. Yes, I was passing that way." She moved the lamp to the end of the table and picked up from a chair a shirt that she was making, then sat down.

"I understand that you've heard that young Cissie Brodie is goin' to have a hairn, an' you've likely heard an' all that I've been across there and finished the dwelling for them, and in spite of the fact that you've also heard tell that that young Master Fischel was sent off to sea for rapin' her you can't help, like the rest of them, in puttin' two and two together."

"Oh, Matthew! I ..." He lifted his hand up to silence her.

"I know, I know, you've never said it. But it's a suspicion in your mind. Well, I want to tell you that the story that you heard about the young master is the truth, an' that the child is none of mine."

God that it only were! He felt for a moment that he had spoken the words aloud, but then she was looking at him softly through the lamplight, saying, "Well now, Matthew, you can come and sit down now, can't you?"

Before he moved from the table he asked, "Are you satisfied in your mind?" And to this she answered, "Yes, Matthew, I'm satisfied in me mind."

As he took his seat opposite her she bent her head over her sewing;

and as she moved the needle rhythmically, she said, "I wouldn't have blamed you for being taken with her, for she's a comely enough girl, whereas me, well" --she moved her head slightly"--I know what I am. I have nothing to offer you but the mill when my father goes and what goes with it."

If she had left it at the first part something in him would have responded to her and he would have said, "You're a good woman. Rose;

it's a woman I want, not a girl," but she had added the clause to the match, the bonus that went with the bond, so to speak, the bond that tied a man to a pit, to a farmer, or to a woman he didn't love, but which offered a bonus for the hazards of the labor.

When, going off on a tangent as it were, yet her words still connected with the same theme, she now said, "William's doing fine. Father, he says he's showin' signs of being cut out for the mill," it was as if she had actually bound him to the chair opposite her, and he knew the irony of it was that only by marrying her could he help Cissie, for it anything were to happen to prevent their coming together then William would be sent packing, and there would be no sacks on a Sunday for the boys to carry across the fells. Furthermore, there would be no apprenticeship for Jimmy in the shop, for no one knew better than himself that he was in no position to keep an apprentice; his trade was worsening, and without the prospect of an alliance with the mill his future, unless there was a miraculous upsurge of orders, looked bleak. She had said, "Sit down, Matthew," and he had sat down; and now he was bound to this armchair, band and foot, for life.

It was the end of November. The days were short and cold, the nights long and cold, but inside the dwelling place there was a modicum of snugness. The fire was on night and day and the temperature inside the walls was bearable, even on the coldest days they'd had so far, and the branches of wood piled high against both end walls not only helped to support the structure but gave Cissie a feeling of security.

It was over a fortnight since Matthew had brought the last load of wood. She hadn't seen him since and she wondered whether the incident that happened that day had anything to do with his absence, for as he was unloading the cart and handing the branches down to her two women from the hamlet passed on the track. They, too, had been to the wood, as the bundles on their backs showed, and they had stopped and looked upwards to the great pile on the cart and the man unloading it, and he had paused in his handling of the wood and looked down at them; and when one made a sound in her throat like a loud derisive "Huhl" she had seen him grit on his teeth. Well, whether the incident had kept him away or not, she knew this morning as she stood in the hamlet and faced the two women she had seen that day, that she was now stamped as a bad 'un.

She had heard through Sarah meeting Dilly Tag" gart that the Robinsons were killing a pig, and she had come into the hamlet to see if she could get some tripe or chitterlings. She had gone round the back way to the Robinsons' yard where Mr. Robinson kept his pigs. The yard showed evidence of recent slaughter and Mr. Robinson himself was in the shed cutting up the beast. He halt turned to her, then turned away again as she asked, " Have you any to spare, Mr. Robinson? " And before he could answer his wife came to the house door and, her eyes hard and her voice tight, had put in quickly, " No, it's all spoke for"; then had added, " If I'd known you were short of a bit we would have kept you some; but then we didn't think you'd need it. "

She had stared at the woman, then at the man before turning away, and outside in the lane she had come face to face with the two women who had seen Matthew bringing her the wood. They were Mrs. Smith and Mrs.

Proctor. Mrs. Proctor was the widow of the carpenter who used to make the coffins. She had no children and now lodged with Mrs. Smith. After returning their stares she turned her back on them and walked away, until the mud came with a plop between her shoulder blades. Swinging round, she saw that Mrs. Smith had thrown it and that Mrs. Proctor was stooping down and scooping up a handful of darts. But when she had straightened and pulled back her arm, she stopped, and while still looking at Cissie she turned her hand 'round, and the darts fell with a sound like cows' splatter on the ground again.

Alone on the fells, she put her head down and cried, but she wiped away all traces of her tears before she entered the dwelling again, where now the room and cave seemed almost empty, holding only Sarah, Charlotte, Joe, Annie, and Nellie.

Bella had been installed for a month in Pinewood House, Westoe, in Shields, and on her two half-days she had kept them enthralled with tales of the splendor of the establishment. Nine in the family there were and fifteen servants to look after them, and the master, Mr. Braithwaite, owned a brewery and other places besides; and she had said to Cissie, if she only saw the clothes the young mistresses wore she would faint right away. And did she know that Miss Catherine, who was the same age as herself, never wore less than four petticoats and the two top ones had six rows of lace on them from the waist down. And then there was the life that went on in the house; and the visitors; and the carriages coming and going. Oh, it was wonderful, wonderful. That is, she admitted after a time, except for the work. She was at the poss tub and the mangle from six till noon, but of course they had time off for breakfast. Then from twelve till half-past six at night she was ironing the roughs, which were the servants' clothes; but of course she had a half-hour for her dinner.

And Mrs. Weir, the laundress, had promised her that if she paid attention she would let her iron the young mistress's hankies, and that was something to look forward to.

Mary's visits were different. Mary was quiet and tired looking; she was thin, thinner even than Sarah and Charlotte; she didn't talk much but she sat close to Cissie all the while; and one day when Cissie, putting her arm around her, asked, "Are you all right, Mary?" she replied, her blue eyes misting, "When I'm fourteen, Cissie, and experienced, can I look out for something' else?" And Cissie said, "Yes, dear, yes, perhaps afore that."

As she had worried more over William than she had over Jimmy, now she worried more over Mary than she did over Bella, although until Bella had gone into service it was she with her forward ways who had given her concern.

Anyway, she now had only five of them to see to.

By the middle of December she had stopped being sick in the morning and felt well again, at least in her body. There was a small mound in her stomach on which she placed her hands at night, but it created no feeling in her, not even of regret or resentment;

the thing was done and couldn't be undone, it had to be faced. And although she didn't want this child, it was in her and it would be born, and part of it would be her; reason it out as she might that she had taken no part in the act, part of the child would be her. The Sunday before Christmas Day the boys did not come over the frost-hard fells with sacks; instead, they came on the cart with Matthew, and on the cart there were not only sacks holding the usual gifts of oatmeal, bread, and cheese, but also a sack with a currant cake in it, a bag of onions, and a dish of pease pudding. And that was not all. There was a great bundle of clothing on the cart, clothing belonging to Rose Watson's mother, and her mother before her, which had been stored away in the loft and which, her message said, she hoped Cissie would find useful in cutting up for the children. The woman was kind. If only she didn't know why she was being kind, she would want to bless her, for the clothes were like a gift from heaven itself.

It was weeks since she had seen Matthew, and now that he was near to her she could not look at him, nor apparently he at her. He gave all his attention to Annie, Charlotte and Sarah as they hung round him, touching him, vying with each other for his hand on their head, for he was the only man in their lives;

meanwhile Joe was being playfully punched and teased by William and Jimmy, both of them, their cheeks red, their eyes bright, and overall well-looking.

When the hullabaloo died down she glanced at Matthew and said, "Could you do with a drop of tea?" and he was on the point of refusing when he changed his mind, saying, "Aye. Yes, it's been a cold drive, I could do with something hot." He didn't feel mean in taking her tea for he had a quarter pound in the tail of his greatcoat pocket which he would put on the chest when she wasn't looking, and with it a pound of sugar, and that would be luxury for her indeed.

When they'd all had "a drop of tea," Jimmy, with wisdom beyond his years, contrived to leave their Cissie alone for a minute or so with Matthew by saying, "Come on the lot of you's an' do some chop- pin'.

There's a barley sugar for the one of you's who does the most, not countin' you, our Willie. " He held up the sweet in one hand while punching at his brother with the other. Then they all scampered through the doorway and outside; and Cissie went and closed the door after them to keep the cold out before going to the top of the chest where the food had been emptied. Touching one thing after another, she said quietly over her shoulder, " Will you tell her that I'm grateful? "

There was a pause before he said, "She knows that," and another pause before he asked, "How you getting' along?"

"Oh, finely." She glanced at him and smiled.

"The wood's a godsend;

we'd never have been able to manage without the wood. "

"You've got enough to last you another month or so, I imagine?" he said.

"Oh, longer than that. The pile seems bigger than the place." She moved her eyes about the room.

"And I keep pickin' to help it along."

"You shouldn't go out pickin' this weather. Are ... are you feeling all right in yourself?"

"Yes, yes." She pulled her shoulders up straight, as if aiming to flatten her stomach.

He walked down the length of the table, then back, and stopped in front of the little fireplace, and putting his hands out to the blaze said, "Do you know where to get help?"

"Help?"

He knew that her face was turned towards him questioningly as was her voice, but he didn't look at her as he said, "I mean, when the time comes, you need a woman." He felt her move away and knew that she had reached the entrance to the cave and was standing there.

"You'll need somebody." He did not add, "especially with the first one," but went on, "There's a woman in Rosier's village. Her name's Hannah Bellamy. She's rough but goodhearted."

She remained silent, thinking. He's right, he's right. But why must it be him to tell me such a thing? And he hadn't said, "Go to the hamlet and ask one of the women," which would have been in order--he must have heard about the mud throwing; news traveled on the wind.

He turned to her now and said quietly, "Well, I must be away. I drive me mother to church; she'll be waiting."

She nodded at him and came towards the table and, resting her hands on it, looked down at them and muttered under her breath, "You've been so kind, good, I ... I hate to impose on you, but could you do one more thing for me?"

"Name it."

She looked up at him, then towards the door, and said, "I'd feel better when I was out if the hairns could lock themselves in. If I could have two sockets to lay a bar across."

He narrowed his eyes at her as he asked, "Somebody been after them?"

She made a small motion with her head, then said, "There was a man came up here day afore yesterday. He offered to buy Joe."

"God's truthi Whati" "Aye, he did. He started with three guineas, then went up to five.

He's lookin' for climbin' boys. I daren't let Joe out of me sight, but he's such a live wire I never know where he is. "

Matthew took in a deep breath. There were some things that stirred him to rage. He had read in Hetherington's Poor Man's Guardian the farce of how the rich had their flues reconstructed, solely, they said, to provide working ease and comfort for the cleaning boys. A few decent men were trying to get an act through Parliament now to prevent a child under ten years old being sent up a chimney, so Parson Hedley said, and then at that age he must only be an apprentice, which meant a poor workhouse brat. Other children weren't to be employed under fourteen years, but he himself would believe that would come about when he saw it, for up till now they still collected them at five and six. Aye, and could find plenty at that age when it meant five guineas in the parents' pockets and one less to feed. At Newcastle, not a month ago, a child had died an agonizing death after dropping exhausted on to a fire. Something should be done about it, and about so many things. He was always saying this inside himself, but what could you do? If you lashed out with your hands they soon had you behind bars, or away to Botany Bay.

It was only three years ago that they hanged the Liney brothers for wounding a gamekeeper. He supposed Parson Hedley was right: in the long run education was the answer, being able to read and write. But it meant that a man had, in a way, to be extra strong-willed and put a curb on both his tongue and hands just to go on believing it.

He said grimly, "I'll fix it for you. I'll bring it over the morrow and put it on. And I'd keep Joe tight near you for the next few days it I was you, and," he added, "I'll keep me eyes open for the scraper.

It'll be pity help him if we meet up. "

Yet he knew as he spoke that if he did meet the scraper and he took him to the justice what would happen. The justice, who was Squire Tallen, would himself pay the man's fine on the side. This was being done all the time, because them in the big houses wanted to make out that without the climbing boys there was danger their mansions might be burned down.

He sometimes wondered why he listened to Parson Hedley at all, except when he was talking of literature, because half of his time he was putting over the goodness of God. And whose God? The God of the lords and the landowners, or their opponents for power, the factory owners and the mine owners. The goodness of Godi When he went out abruptly, saying no more, Cissie thought there were things about him she didn't understand. But then, how could she, for after all what did she know about him except that he was kind, and had a feeling for her; but just a feeling, for if it had been love he couldn't really think of marrying Rose Watson, in spite of the numbers depending on him. But even as she thought this she knew it was the yammering of a young girl that was no more, for with a child inside her she had become a woman.

On Christmas Eve a snow blizzard covered the fells, and during the whole of the day the light was like that of twilight and they could only see each other clearly when she put fresh wood on the fire and it blazed up. But they were warm inside and out for she had cut up the old clothes and roughly remade them. Moreover, they'd had rabbit stew, together with potatoes and mangel-wurzels, for two days now. Joe had been lucky, for he had caught a rabbit on the open fells, and they were well set for Christmas Day too. When the boys had come yesterday they had brought her a hand of pork with plenty of lean on it, a big currant loaf, and a dish of pease pudding.

As it was Christmas Eve, she had done what her da always did, see that they all had a warm wash down before they went to bed. Other times it would be cold water, or the river itself, but Christmas Eve was special.

After each one of the girls was washed, she put her back into her petticoat and straight into bed, and when Joe had donned his shirt he followed them. All in the one bed, they played and teased and quarreled until, standing at the opening of the cave, she peered through the dim light reflected from the fire and warned them, "Now stop it the lot of you's, else I'm cooldn' no dinner the morrow. Mind." They giggled and laughed at this, knowing that the threat was without foundation; then calling, "Good-night, our Cissie. Good-night, our Cissie," they settled down.

Going to the fireplace now, she sat down and took off her boots and looked at her red chilblained feet- she had worn no stockings for months. Slowly she put them into the rapidly cooling water in which she had washed them all, and, closing her eyes and letting out a deep sigh, she relaxed. And so weary was she that in a moment she had fallen into a doze.

How long she had been asleep she didn't know but she was brought startlingly awake by a tapping on the door. Wide-eyed, she turned and looked towards it. Making to rise and forgetting that her feet were still in the bowl and cold now, she almost upset the water over the floor. She grabbed at a bit of hessian and roughly dried her feet;

then going to the door, she asked, "Who's that?"

"Me ... Matthew."

"Oh." She took off the bar and pulled the door wide, and he stood in the entrance shaking the snow from his hat and coat.

When he was in the room she stared into his snow- rimmed eyes and said under her breath, "How did you manage to get the cart across in this?"

He went to the table and put his lantern on it, and the bag he had been carrying, saying "I couldn't use the horse. I walked."

"Walked?" It was bad enough walking over the treacherous hills and hollows of the fell land during daylight in weather like this, but at night anything could happen; you just had to slip and when they found you, you'd be stiff. She said, "You shouldn't have come out on such a night."

He turned and looked at her where she was standing barefooted on the rock floor, and he said, "And you should get into your boots, you'll get your death."

"OhI" She made a sound in her throat, which dismissed his concern.

"I'm used to it. I've ... I've been washin' them, I mean the hairns." She went to the hearth and picked up the bowl of water and set it to one side; then, looking at him again, she said, "Can I take your coat, you'll find the benefit of it when you go out?"

He paused for a moment as if considering, then said, "Aye, you're right." And taking the coat off and turning it inside out, he laid it across a chair, adding, "I went to Shields Market the day."

"Oh! I've never been to the market. Me da always said he would take us but ... but the chance never came up."

"Oh, it's a sight," he said.

"And the people. You can't get stirred.

But you're glad when you get out of || it, and away from the town;

it's too noisy, too much bustle. " He was now tipping out the contents of the sack on the table.

"I thought these would help their Christmas." He pushed aside six oranges and a bundle of toffee apples, and pointing to a bag, he said, "Them's tiger nuts; they'll keep their jaws goin'." And now he separated from the rest, two parcels, one largish, the other small, and having placed them one on top of the other, he handed them to her, saying softly, "A warm Christmas, Cissie."

She took the parcels from his hand, looked at them for a moment, then raised her eyes to his. Her face looked blank.

"I hope they fit; I just guessed your size."

She still stared at him until he said, "Well, aren't you going to look and see what they are?"

She opened the smaller package first and when she laid across her hands a pair of long, brown, hand- knitted stockings, she pressed her lips together but said nothing. Then her hands were fumbling at the larger parcel; and as she undid the wrapping, the contents seemed to breathe and swell. Slowly she unfolded a fawn shawl with a pink fringe; then as she held it before her she looked as Charlotte or Sarah might have looked when confronted with wonder: a child believing yet not believing. She lifted her eyes to his but was unable to speak; a great warmth was filling her; her eyes were full of light. Never in her life had she possessed anything of color; her clothes had always been black or brown, and never had she worn anything new. Once a year her da had taken the money he had saved for the purpose and gone to the rag market in Newcastle, and there, for five shillings, bought a pile of old clothes enough to last a year, and her mother had cut them up and remade them. But not once had her da brought back anything bright and light; he always picked serges and worsteds, knowing these to be hard-wearing. But here she had a dove-fawn shawl with a glowing pink fringe.

Slowly she gathered it into her arms and held it to her breast as if it were a child, and, her head bowing deep over it, tears rained down her face and tell on to it.

"Aw, Cissie. Cissie." He was standing close to her, his hands gripping her shoulders.

"Ah, don't. I thought it would please you, something something different."

When her head fell lower still and the sobs shook her body his hands moved from her shoulders and slid slowly round her back; and he held her close and gentle, his chin resting on her bent head, his eyes staring at the jagged wall of rock opposite to him, from which was oozing little rivulets of moisture. Then after a moment, as if breaking through a barrier of restraint, his mouth dropped into her hair, and he moved his face back and forwards over it.

She was still holding the shawl, her arms crossed over it were like a barrier between them, and he pulled it from them and threw it on the table and, lifting her head sharply upwards with his hand, he looked into her tear-washed face and muttered thick e ly, "I love you, Cissie. You know that, don't you? I love you, but ... but I've got to go through with this other, I've got to." He now shook her slightly.

"You understand why? Do you understand why?"

She gulped, closed her eyes, and nodded her head once.

His voice was coming like a whispering growl from his throat now.

"If it just rested with me I would take you and the horde of them ..

an'"-He jerked his head upwards before adding, " An' the one that's comin'. I would take the lot if it was just me. But there's them back home; I'm all they've got to live by, and trade's not so good. " Not so good? He could have said it had been getting steadily worse over the past two months, that he'd had no orders since making that cart, that he'd had to put Walters on halt-time in order to keep Jimmy on, and that he must have been stark staring mad to go into Shields and pay seventeen and six for the shawl. The two shillings he had given for the stockings was really more than he could afford; but seventeen and six! The money he should have paid Riley's bill with. Still, Riley wasn't waiting for it for his bread and butter, else he would have stumped it up right away. Riley was a man with four ironmonger's shops, a man who was buying property;

he could afford to wait. But still, seventeen and six;

how was he going to make it up? --To hell! To hell's flames. It might be the one and only thing he could ever buy her . out of his own money that was.

He pleaded now with her, bending his head close to hers, "Tell me you understand why I've got to do what I'm goin' to do, just tell me, Cissie."

She cleared her throat, wiped each cheek with her fingers, then said softly, "I understand, Matthew."

They looked deep into each other; then, his breath on her face, he whispered, "Will you tell me one thing more? Do you love me?"

Her gaze did not move from his, but she did not speak. Then with a sudden movement she fell against him, and his mouth came on hers and they stood there locked together and swaying until she gasped for breath. Then they were staring at each other again. And now he drew her to the one chair that had a back to it. Sitting down, he pulled her gently onto his knees and, cradling her in his arms, he said thickly, "Let's stay so a while; it may have to last us a lifetime."

She carried the child high. It pushed out under her breasts and by the beginning of May she couldn't fasten her skirt over it although she had put in gussets. At various times the child kicked her. It seemed strong and impatient to be born, but it had six weeks more to go. She wished the days would fly for she was tired of the burden of her body;

she felt cumbersome and she became weary so quickly.

It had been a beautiful spring, and it was just as well for there had been another strike at Rosier's pit. They had brought gangs of men over from Ireland and turned the miners from the cottages, and for a time she had neighbors on the fells, but at a good distance away. Yet their presence made her feel fearful, because, copying her, they had carted stones from the quarry and built shanties, and, although it was still common land, the sight of so many small stone huts could incense the gentry, and they might take the law in their hands and enclose the fells.

The sun was shining brightly today but there was a very high wind blov/ing and she had to hold on to her shawl, not the fawn and pink one. As she walked along the main rut-hollowed road from the farm she had to pass by the North Lodge of Lord Fischel's estate and she always hurried along this sec ton of the road. Today she had passed the gate and was just about to leave the road and mount the fells when a carriage came rocking towards her and she scrambled up the bank and stood for a moment breathlessly looking down at the galloping horses and glimpsing through the windows the face of a man she recognized, although she had only seen him once before.

Lord Fischel, too, had seen the girl only once before but in the fleeting glimpse he got of her standing on the bank silhouetted against the skyline he remembered her; and the glimpse had shown him more than the girl's face: it had shown him that she was with child.

As the carriage rolled through the North Lodge gates and up the driveway and across the park he sat straight in his seat, his eyes flicking along the rows of buttons in the black leather upholstery opposite as if he were counting them.

Having arrived at the house, he was met on the steps as usual by Hatton, solicitous always for his master but not presuming to inquire if he had had a good journey.

It was the valet, Cunningham, who was privileged to ask this question of his master as he helped him off. with his boots, then his coat and cravat.

"I trust you have had a good day, m'Lord?" And to this his master replied, "Fair, Cunnings, fair."

The valet's name was Cunningham but a three- syllabled name was considered too distinguished for a servant and so had been reduced to Cunnings. Cunningham did not object to this. He was a small, thoughtful man, with the quiet, restrained manner expected of a valet;

but his position in the household was unique, in that as much as it was possible he was in his master's confidence.

His master now lifted one foot up after the other so that his stockings could be pulled off. He always changed his stockings after a journey and he watched the process as he said, "Do you remember, Cunnings, the reason why I sent my son away?"

Calmly Cunningham replied, "Yes, m'Lord." His Lordship was already aware without asking that he knew the reason, the whole household knew the reason--had it not been witnessed by the two coachmen? -in fact, the whole county knew the reason, and Cunningham knew that his master was thought to be insane for wreaking such vengeance on his son; girl servants were dropped every day by the sons of their masters. It was looked upon in some quarters as necessary practice for the young bloods. If there was no result of the association, well and good, and the young person might benefit by a present; but if there was a result she was sent packing. The issue of the wealthy was so mixed with the poor that he wondered, during his moments of contemplation on such matters, that the strain didn't rise above its environment and make itself evident. But perhaps it did just that, because there were men everywhere risking their livelihoods in order to learn to read and write. This in turn, in some cases, made them become pamphleteers and write against the blood that was surely in them.

Life, Cunningham often considered, was a very strange thing; but he was satisfied with his share of it, and had been for the last thirty years, during which time he had served his master even before he came into the title, and had never been out of his presence for more than twenty-four hours since. He had dressed His Lordship for his wedding;

he had accompanied him on his honeymoon; and as the years went by he had suffered with him through Her Ladyship's lack of decorum. He had, like his master, but from a distance, listened to her upbraiding and talk that did not befit an ordinary woman, let alone a lady; and he had, like his master, disliked, from the very begin110 f. ne swelling ri ace rung, the twins her ladyship had presented to her husband.

Henry Cunningham did not believe in a God, or a hereafter, but he believed in his master's right to rule through the heritage of the Fischel family.

And now His Lordship said, "I would like you, Cunnings, to take a walk on the fells tomorrow and make the acquaintance of a person who lives there in what I understand to be an extension to a cave. Her name is Brodie; she is with child. I want to know when it is expected."

I; "Yes, m'Lord." There was no hesitation in the answer, no sign of surprise at such an order.

His Lordship, now stripped of his clothes, even of his skin-tight underpants, lay on a straight couch placed at some little distance from the fire, and submitted himself to be rubbed down with a warm rough towel, after which Cunningham sprinkled eau-de- cologne liberally on his hands and massaged the thin, almost fleshless frame.

As Lord Fischel gently sniffed the stringent odor up his nostrils he thought. It could be anybody's; they lie like rabbits. But he would know by the day on which it was born. He did not ask himself why he was taking an interest in the offspring of a girl who was, after all, only fell trash, for he could not admit to himself that he was missing his son. He had never liked his children; he had been glad to get rid of them. Singly, each had been an irritant; combined, and under this roof with him, they had become nothing short of a nuisance; yet there was that in him, if he would acknowledge it, that was crying out for his son. There was that in him that would have altered the charter of the Virago and brought his son back to these shores again. But there was nothing in him that desired that he should ever set eyes on his daughter again.

The gentleman was dressed plainly in black and he asked the way to Brockdale.

"Oh! Brockdale." She shook her head at him.

"You're goin' the wrong way. This leads to the hamlet of Heatherbrook; Brockdale lies over there." She pointed.

"And it's all of three to four miles."

"Oh! That far?" he said.

"Yes, Sir."

He raised his head and looked up at the sky, saying, "It could be rain, I won't venture that far today. It's very pleasant up here." He spoke as a stranger to these parts, and she said, "Yes, Sir, in the spring and summer; but at the back end it's bleak."

When he turned from his direction and walked by her side she didn't mind. He was a gentleman, yet there was a qualifying element in her classification. Perhaps not quite a gentleman, for gentlemen wouldn't talk kindly with her like he did. But someone like Parson Hedley. And he was dressed not unlike the parson--sober, but much more neatly and very clean; his hands were whiter than any woman's she had ever seen.

As they walked along the track below the dwelling, his prophesized rain came in a sharp stinging shower and she said, "Ohi Sir, you're going to get wet." She turned from him as if to hurry up the rise;

then looking at him again and realizing he was without a. greatcoat, she pointed over her shoulder.

"You could shelter if you like." He was a stranger but she had no fear of him.

"Thank you; I'd be pleased to." He hurried after her towards the odd-looking habitation, and when she opened the door and stood aside to let him pass, his step became slow as if he were walking into an unknown world. And such was the impression the interior made on him that his imperturbability was shattered. Three little girls were sitting on a piece of black matting before a small, rough fireplace, and in a basket was another child. The girl looked at them,

then said immediately and, he thought, anxiously, "Where's Joe?" And the tallest girl, her eyes on him, answered her sister, saying, "He's down by the burn. He's comin'. We ran 'cos we saw it was gonna rain;

you said keep dry. "

He watched her push past him now and go and stand in the rain and call, "Joel Joel" and then she turned into the room again and sighed as she said, "He's comin'," and by way of explanation, she added, "It's my little brother." He thought that she was very anxious that the boy shouldn't get wet, yet when the fair, bright-faced child came into the dwelling she did not attempt to divest him of his wet clothes.

"Would you care to sit down?"

"No; thank you." He refused the only real chair he could see in the place. Opposite him was a dark hole which he surmised led into a cave.

He glanced up at the lean-to roof and saw it was constructed of wooden beams with thatch across them. Then, looking about him, he shuddered inwardly at the bareness of the place. Only one thing surprised him pleasantly, and that was the absence of stench; he understood that you could cut the smell with a knife in such places. In fact the servants were forbidden to enter the Hall if they had visited a miner's or farm laborer's cottage before first being picked over and deloused in the slaughter room. The laundress did the delousing for the women and the second coachman for the men. Because of this, servants were rarely engaged from roundabout; His Lordship preferred that they should come from away so that they would need to visit their people only once a year.

He stood in silence for some time, the children staring at him. Then the girl said, "I could offer you a drop of tea, Sir, if you'd care?"

"Oh no; thank you. Thank you very much. It's very kind of you, but the shower is nearly over and I must be on my way."

He found he was speaking to her not in the tone he used with the servants in the House, but almost as if she were an equal.

He put on his hat and, going towards the open door, said, "It's almost over; the sun is coming out." Then turning to her, he added, "Thank you for your kindness. If I happen to be walking this way again I hope I may ask after you?"

His manner was so courteous, kindly, that she smiled at him and said, "Yes, Sir. Thank you. Sir." She did not ask where he was from or where he was going. You did not question gentlemen; or near gentlemen.

Forty-five minutes later Cunningham stood before his master in the study, saying, "I did not find the opportunity, m'Lord, to ascertain when the child would be born, but I have made it possible to call on her on my walks across the fells."

Lord Fischel stared up at his man for a moment;

then looking down at the paper on which he had been writing, he said, "That is well. Cunnings. Tell me, how did you find the person?"

"Civil, m'Lord, and clean; unusually so under the circumstances."

"The circumstances?"

"The habitation, m'Lord. It's an erection built in front of a hole in an outcrop of rock."

"I see." His Lordship moved his head. Then picking up his pen and looking down at the writing paper again, he said, "You will avail yourself of the opportunity to call at regular intervals until you get the required information. Even then it may not be accurate, these things fluctuate." He glanced up at his man, and Cunningham made a motion of agreement with his head and His Lordship ended, "You'll continue to take your walks until the actual day."

"Very good, m'Lord."

With a slight movement of his hand Lord Fischel dismissed the valet and began to write, but only until the door had closed. Then he sat back in his chair. He still refused to ask himself where his interest in the birth of this child would lead him; but he did think that he was pleased to learn that the girl was clean, for the idea that the seed of his seed should be breeding in a dirty body was intolerable to him.

It was the middle of June and she was weary unto death and she had still another fortnight to go. Moreover, adding to her misery, it had rained for three days, only this morning fairing up.

Sarah and Charlotte had gone gooseberry picking, taking Annie with them, but she hadn't allowed Joe to go because she herself couldn't go. Last week the man had been 'round again asking to buy Joe and saying he was growing so fast he would soon be worth nothing, and she had yelled at him and told him she'd tell the justice. And now Joe had slipped out and she couldn't find him.

For the past four weeks she had felt desperately lonely and at times in the night she had cried, not for her da now, or her ma, but just for someone to talk to.

She was forever trying the impossible task of pushing Matthew out of her mind, for at times she felt bitter against him. After what he had said, and how he had acted on Christmas Eve, she thought that he would have come once in every short while, say once a week or so, but she had only seen him four times altogether since that night, and then he had stood away from her, even when the hairns weren't about.

All he had asked was how she was and if she was managing. She couldn't understand him; she knew he niust marry the woman, but he had said it was her he loved. If it hadn't been for the gentleman who walked across the fells and passed the time of day with her now and again she wouldn't have spoken to an adult soul for weeks, for since she had become so big, and with the incident in the hamlet still in the forefront of her mind, she sent Sarah and Charlotte to Brockdale for the few groceries that they needed;

and in a new arrangement she now took William's wages from the mill in flour and she knew she benefited by it.

She slithered over the wet humps at the top of a rise from where, in the distance, she could see the outskirts of the wood and, putting her hands to her mouth, she called, "Jo-ool You Jo-ool" And when there was no response to her calling she became filled with panic. If that man got Joe she would die; she would die when she was having the hairn 'cos she would have no wish to live. Joe with his impish face and lightning movements, his gay laugh, being forced up a chimney, being stuck up a chimney, being suffocated up a chimney. She held her hands to her face.

If only he would appear, dart from behind a rock perhaps where he was hiding. She wouldn't go for him; at this moment she would hug him to her.

When she had told him of the scraper he had laughed at her and said, "I can run like a hare; no scraper man is gonna catch me."

When she heard a cough she swung round, and there was the black-clothed gentleman at the bottom of the rise.

"Good-morning," he called up to her; and she nodded down to him and said, "Good-mornin'." Perhaps he'd seen Joe. As she made her way down towards him the slope took her into an almost shambling run and she was about ten feet from him and trying to steady herself on the wet grass when she slipped and fell over sideways. For a moment she felt only a kind of numbness; it was when the man took her arm and tried to raise her from the ground that the pain, shooting through her, caused the whole fell to disappear in a sheet of blackness.

A few minutes later, when she got to her feet, she found she couldn't straighten up, and when the man kept asking her if she was hurt she could only nod her head.

"Oh, dear, dear; you shouldn't have run." He was very solicitous.

"Can I help you to your house?"

"I'll ... I'll be all right in a minute; it's ... it's just like a stitch, you know."

Yes, he knew. But he also knew that what she was feeling wasn't the outcome of a stitch.

She drew in a long breath and straightened up a little further and half smiled at him as she said, "It's ... it's going," then added, "Have you seen me brother, you know the little one, Joe?"

"No, I'm sorry I haven't. Has he been gone long?"

She jerked her head, then said, "About an hour I think.

"Tisn't long that, but there's a man. He's ... he's gatherin' climbing boys. He he wanted to buy him ... buy Joe. I'm frightened."

They were walking now, she still bent slightly to the side, and he thought as he watched her slow progress that her concern for her family was commendable. Under the circumstances it would have been wise, he thought, to have one less to feed, besides being paid for the boy; and climbing boys were necessary; how else could you keep the chimneys clear? He understood they were trying out a newfangled machine but he knew it wouldn't succeed because it couldn't get into the crevices, and he had heard it made a great deal more mess than the boys did.

She was a strange girl, he considered, yet very pleasing. In an odd way over the past weeks he had become attached to her, concerned for her--so much so that the reports he had given his master were a little larger than life, but all to her credit.

They were in sight of the dwelling when Joe came running out of the doorway and Cissie stopped and cried, "Where you been? Oh, you are a bad 'unl" And when he dashed to her, his face bright and laughing, she encircled him with her arms and held him tightly to her. Then suddenly with a drawn-out groan she fell on to her knees, her body doubled in two.

"Our Cissie! Our Cissie! What's the matter with you?" Joe wasn't laughing now, and after a moment she looked from the man who was bending over her to Joe and, gripping his arm, said, "Run ... run to Rosier's village, you know, where Mrs. Bellamy lives. Tell her ... tell her I think me time's come. Bring her back with you. You understand?"

Joe nodded, but as he made off she checked him and after drawing in a long breath she gasped, "And mind, don't, don't talk to anybody on the road. If you see that man, run; do you hear?"

"Aye, Cissie. Aye, I'll run."

"Go on." She pushed him forward, and he went skipping and bounding over the wet ground like a hare itself.

"Let me help you" Cunningham now took her arm and led her into the dwelling and when he had sat her on the chair, she said, "Thank you.

Thank you. "

"Hadn't you better go to bed?"

"Yes. Yes, I'll do that." After a moment she got to her feet, saying, "I'm all right. Thank you. Thank you very much."

The "thank you" was a form of dismissal but he still stood in the room and watched her go through the opening into the cave; and after about ten minutes, when he thought he had given her time enough to get undressed and into bed, he called, "Are you all right?" and she answered, "Yes, yes, I'm all right."

Slowly he went and stood in the opening and looked down towards the floor where she was lying on a wooden structure on top of a straw mattress that had a patched quilt over it. She was still fully dressed, and as he was about to speak again he was checked by the sight of her knees suddenly coming upwards while at the same time her head was bent forward as it to meet them.

After a moment when she put her legs down and adjusted her clothes he asked softly, "Is it possible for me to get you something?" And to this she only shook her head. Looking about him he thought what could he get her anyway in this place? He was surprised that he should find himself so deeply moved and distressed; this assignment, as it were, had turned out quite differently from what he had expected.

Over the years, taking the tone from his master, he had come to look on those who worked outside the precincts of the Hall as a form of species only a little above the animal level. Rosier's village for example was a case in point. They worked and drank and fought and bred amid stench and filth that even some animals wouldn't tolerate. A badger, for example, always kept a clean house.

"0-h G-God! 0-h M-al Ma!"

Her body was doubled up tighter now. He could see her bare thighs. He turned away in embarrassment, also in deep distress, because the sight of the girl was reviving memories that he had buried long ago for his own peace of mind.

After a while there was no sound from the room, and, seeing a bucket of water standing on a chest with a mug near, he examined it to find it was clear, and dipped the mug into the water. He now went slowly into the cave and to her side, and, bending down, said, "Have this drink of water."

She raised herself on her elbow and took the mug from his hand and drained it. Then, muttering, "Ta, Thanks," she lay back and closed her eyes.

The sweat was pouring down her face. Her hair he noticed, as he had done before, was beautiful. Her skin, too, was beautiful. He took out a very white handkerchief and, assuming the position he took up when he pulled off his master's boots, he drew his han kerchief gently around her face, and she opened her eyes and gazed at him; very much, he thought, like a wild doe in agony. And he had seen a wild doe in agony--some huntsmen were very bad shots. Two hours later he was still with her, but looking now from the door towards the track along which he imagined the woman and the boy would come. In the last half-hour her pains had been tumbling one on top of the other and he knew that the birth of the child was imminent.

The cry that pierced his head turned him quickly about, and he went back into the cave and stopped just within the doorway to be dumbfounded by the sight before him. The girl was clutching the sides of the bed, her body arched and heaving; her knees were up and wide apart; her clothes, a mere skirt and a petticoat, were tumbled back about her thighs, and from her womb was poking the head of a child.

It must have been that her groans and cries overlaid the entrance of the woman and the boy, for he found himself thrust aside by a big creature in a black shawl who cried at him, "Who you? What ya doin' here? Get out of iti" When he stared at her speechless, she yelled at him, "Go on. Bugger off il No place for you. What you want in here anyway?"

He didn't immediately obey this creature's commands but stood and watched her bend over the bed and place her big dirty hands under the child that was sliding into the world, and as he watched he became filled with bitterness and anger, for it was just such a woman, big, dirty and liquor-filled as this one was, who had killed his own wife and child, his wife to die in agony, having been poisoned through dirt. He had been twenty-two when that happened and life had ceased for him for a while, until one day, carrying on his work of assistant tailor, he had gone to measure a young man, son of a lord, whose name was Fischel.

He was brought back from the past by the sound of the boy crying, and he put his hand on his head and turned him about and took him outside.

Then, as he was about to take his leave, he remembered that he didn't know the sex of the child and he went back into the cave to hear the woman giving the explanation of why she had been drinking.

"At the mill for boxings I was," she was saying, "and the weddin' in full swing. Daughter marryin' the wheelwright from Benham. He's on to a good thing there. But she's not everybody's cup of tea. Still, there was no cheese parin', not only mead but gin they had, an' the hard stuff, an' it all flowin' to each an' everybody."

He called softly to the woman.

"What is it?"

She had just cut the cord with a knife and, taking the yelling child in her hands, she thrust it towards him, pushing its buttocks up and crying, "Therel That satisfy ya? Who the hell are ya, anyway? You've no right in here."

He ignored the woman and glanced from the child to the girl on the bed. She was lying quite still now. She looked dead, but her breast was moving up and down. He turned and went out.

Lord Fischel thought that if the child had been born a fortnight after the specified date from conception he would have allowed it, but it had been born a fortnight before, which could mean that she had conceived before; people in her position started very young. In his grandfather's time, looking as she did, she would doubtless have been brought to the House when she was fourteen, if not before. Yet in spite of this reasoning, the thought persisted that the date of birth could veer from the nine months, especially in the case of the first child, and with her falling.

As the weeks went by this thought kept recurring, until one day he reopened the subject with Cunningham by saying, "You may take a stroll over the fells. Cunnings, and see that person again with a view to looking at the child. I want to know if it carries any resemblance."

Cunningham stood looking at his master's back, and he didn't make any response until His Lordship turned on him and said sharply, "Welll" "There is a strong resemblance, m'Lord, I have taken the liberty of visiting the person once or twice since the birth. The ... the resemblance is most noticeable in ... in the nose, m'Lord. Children's features are apt to alter, m'Lord, but the bone structure I would say is that of your father. The child's face, although plump with baby fat, is long, and the head large towards the back."

After a moment His Lordship turned away and he was sitting down before the long mirror, with Cunningham dressing his hair, before he spoke again;

and then he asked, "Would it be possible for you to bring the child here, say at night?"

Cunningham's hands became still on his master's head. His eyes looked through the mirror into the cold grey ones and he so far forgot himself as to omit the appendix as he said bluntly, "No." Then hastily he added, "Well, you see, m'Lord, she's a good mother and seems very taken with the child."

His Lordship now made a sound in his throat and after a moment he asked, "Well, how do you suggest I could see it?"

"Well, m'Lord." Cunningham paused to consider,

then said, "You could be out shooting, m'Lord, and happen to be passing the habitation."

"You know that I wouldn't be shooting on the open fells." His voice was impatient.

"And I would never be passing the habitation on foot."

The whole tone dismissed the idea as paltry, and now he went on, command in his voice, "Tell her that I wish to see the child. She is to bring him to the North Lodge tomorrow afternoon, say at four o'clock."

The "but" was stilled on Cunningham's tongue. All he could do was to answer quietly, "Very well, m'Lord."

Up to this moment Cunningham had always been proud of his position as valet to Lord Fischel, but now, explaining it to this girl, he felt as if he were confessing to some shameful thing, and his whole manner bore this out.

"You see," he said, "I came at His Lordship's behest. I am his valet and, being so, he gave me an order and I had to obey. You understand?"

She had drawn back from him, her face expressing her fear. She had liked this man; she had thought he was kind; he had been the only one with her in that awful travail before the child was born; she had sensed his pity and concern for her, but now she saw him as nothing more than a spy, a lackey at best, obeying orders. She answered him over the distance, saying, "I don't care who you are, or what you are, I'm not taking him to the Lodge, he's mine. I didn't want him, I had no part in him, but now he's mine and I'm keepin' him."

"Please, please listen to me." Cunningham bent deferentially towards her.

"First of all, will you believe me when I say that during the weeks I have known you I have come to respect you, and I would not willingly do anything to add to your burden? It is my hope that I might be able to lighten it."

"By havin' him taken away? ... No."

"Just think for a moment." He now joined his hands together in front of his narrow chest, and again she was reminded of Parson Hedley.

"They are powerful, I mean lords and all people who live in great mansions." He was speaking as if he were aligning himself with her against them, the gentry. He went on, his voice just above a whisper now, "They have ways and means to get what they want, and a position such as yours offers them numerous ways and means.... You understand me?"

Yes, yes, she understood him; and with understanding her fear grew. He was right, they had power. For one thing they could tear her dwelling place down and turn her off the fells. They could make out she was a bad woman and take the child from her. As her fear increased her defiance ebbed.

Seeing this, he put in soothingly, "It will only be for a moment, you needn't let him out of your arms. And there'll be no one else there but His Lordship, I promise you."

She said now, piteously, "He won't try to take it away from me, will he, I mean, do something so that I won't be able to keep it?"

"No; His Lordship is a good man, a man of principle. Just think what he did when...." His voice trailed away before beginning again, "He sent his son and daughter away, you know that. You have nothing to fear from His Lordship. Although" --he moved his head slightly"--he does not like to be crossed."

She was staring at him now unblinking; and then she asked, "What time?"

"Four o'clock. It is barely three yet, you have time to get the baby dressed, and ... and yourself." He hesitated on the last words, and she said, "I am dressed."

He looked at the patched bodice, the serge skirt, and the hessian apron, and he remembered that these were the clothes she wore when the child was born and he said, "I'm sorry."

She saw he was sorry, and to ease his embarrassment she turned from him and went into the dwelling and picked the child up from the basket and washed him, and put on a clean binder and an odd- looking nightgown that she had made out of the piece of linen Rose Watson had wrapped the cheese and bread in on the one and only time she had visited the mill, and some grey lining that she had taken from one of the old dresses; she had used the lining for the back part of the nightgown. Going to the box, she took out the fawn shawl with the pink fringe and she held it in her hand for a moment and looked down on it before she wrapped it around the child, then laid him in the basket again.

Now she washed her face and hands in the bowl, smoothed down her hair, took off her hessian apron and, going to the door, looked past the man, where he was standing patiently waiting, and called to Joe who was chopping wood, saying, "Come and get yourself clean." And when he came into the room she said, "Wash your face and hands, we're going for a walk."

"A walk?" He screwed up his bright eyes at her.

"What have I got to wash me hands an' face to go for a walk for?"

"Do as you're bid, and be quick." Then going to the door again, she said, "I must take him along 'cos the girls are out pickin'." And he nodded at her, saying, "That will be quite in order."

Five minutes later they set out for the North Lodge. The lodge keeper was expecting them. He was waiting by the small gate and he opened it at their approach and stared at them, but he didn't speak until he had closed it after them; then in a grave undertone he murmured to Cunningham, "His Lordship's inside." And his manner suggested that God had descended into his house.

Cunningham motioned Cissie to go forward while putting a restraining hand on Joe, and when she walked towards the cottage door the lodge keeper darted before her, knocked hastily on the panel, then pushed the door open; and when she had passed over the threshold, he closed the door behind her.

She was standing in a small room, not half as clean as her habitation and smelling of musk and onions;

she took in these impressions on the side, but her eyes looked straight towards the finely dressed man standing with his back to the little window. The first time she had seen his face was when she was lying prone on the ground, and she saw it again now as if it were coming at her from a distant and vague dream.

Lord Fischel took the handkerchief from his nose- the odor of the room offended him--and he, in turn, stared at the girl, ignoring for the moment the bundle in her arms. And he, too, remembered her from that distant time, but thought now, as he hadn't thought then, that she was beautiful; and he was amazed afresh that such as she could be thrown up from the dregs of the earth. She appeared clean--her clothes, although threadbare as they were, weren't befouled--but what impressed him most at this moment was the expression in her eyes. No one of his servants would have dared to look at him like this, for her look was telling him that she could read his mind and her answer was "No."

Perhaps it was this knowledge that tempered his manner, for he did an unusual thing--he asked her to be seated.

Her back straight, the child held tightly against her breast, she sat down on a wooden seat near the table, and he, his voice still moderated to a low pitch, said, "The child, is he well?"

"Yes, Sir, very well."

Her mistaken form of address brought no sharp reprimand from him;

instead, moving slightly from the window and still keeping his eyes on her, he said,

"Had you associated with men of your own kind before my son so far forgot himself as to take you?"

Her chin trembled, her head moved backwards and forwards in small movements and she had to force herself to swallow before she could answer him. Then, in no injured tone such as he expected from her, but her voice clear and level and her bearing dignified, she said, "I had been with no man, or wished to. My father, he was different, he could read and write, he brought us up respectable."

Their eyes held until His Lordship found he had to take his gaze from her, stopping himself from looking downwards only by directing his eyes to the low, smoke-begrimed ceiling. Then, his clean-cut lips working one against the other, he pursed them for a moment before saying abruptly, "I would like to see the child."

She did not get to her feet but she opened the fawn shawl and waited, and he was forced to step forward.

The moment his eyes beheld the child he experienced a pain. It was as if his ribs had been pierced by a sharp instrument. The child was awake and was looking up at him with eyes set in deep sockets. The nose was straight and large for the face, the mouth was his father's mouth; in fact so uncanny was the likeness, that he imagined for a moment that he was looking at the shrunken head of his father. And this impression held even when the child suddenly gurgled and, pushing out its lips, made a bubble with its saliva. Still looking down on it, he asked quietly, "What have you named it?"

"Richard; it was me da's second name."

His head jerked so quickly that a bone cracked audibly in his neck.

This was more than coincidence surely, for his father's second name had been Richard.

His conviction now that he was being led towards taking certain steps with regard to this child was stronger than ever.

He walked away from her and to the window and with his back to her he asked, "Will you part with the child?"

"No, no, I'll not." Her reply came quick and from deep within her throat.

"Not for anything."

He was facing her again, his chin out, his whole demeanor haughty.

"You'll be amply compensated."

"I don't want nothin', only him." She pressed the child tightly to her now.

"Nobody is goin' to take him away from me."

He could take. the child away from her by the simple matter of going to the law: the child was his grandson and the mother had no real means of supporting him. But this way would mean publicity, and he wanted no further publicity. What would have to be done would have to be done quietly, without fuss or bother.

He now took what he thought was a diplomatic way. He said to her, "Would you allow the child to remain in my care for a while during which time I would pay you the sum of ten shillings a week?"

She closed her eyes and drooped her head and swung it helplessly from side to side. The movement was so definite that it banished any further thought of diplomacy and he said harshly, "I will double the sum. You're in need of money; I understand you've a family to support.

For as long as you allow the child to remain with me I will see that you are paid one pound per week. " She couldn't refuse that sum. No one of her kind, and in such need as she was, would be so stupid.

She opened her eyes, lifted her head and looked at him. One pound a week. He wanted the child so much that he was willing to pay a pound a week for it. On a pound a week they could live like him, like lords, they could feed as they had never fed before. On a pound a week she could afford to go into the town and look for a house. She'd be able to get a permit to move from her particular parish if she could show she had a pound a week coming in. But what would all that mean without the child? She hadn't wanted him, even up to that day on the fells when she had slipped she hadn't wanted him, and for one moment she had hoped that her slipping might have broken his neck or killed him in some way; but now there was no money in the world that could buy him.

When he saw the softening of her face he thought he had won, as he knew money always won, until she said, "I'm sorry; if I could do this for you I would, but I couldn't part with him, for no money could I part with him." And it was strange that in this moment she should feel regret that it was impossible for her to part with the child, for the man before her, the great lord from Houghton Hall, was evoking her pity, because as she said to herself, he looked sort of alone, lost like.

She rose to her feet saying now, "Will you permit me going. Sir. An' good-day to you." She covered the child up as she turned from him, and went out of the door and looked at Cunningham, who was standing on the drive, but didn't speak to him. Then turning to Joe, who was climbing the iron gate, she said, "Come along with you," and together they went out into the road. And there Joe asked, "What had you to go in the Lodge for?" And she answered, "I had to see the bailiff; I was after a job but I didn't get it." And he said, "

"Cos you had the hairn?" And she answered, "

"Cos I had the hairn."

Bella came running up from the track panting; her face was alight and she was calling over the distance, "Hello. Hello, all of you's." And Joe ran towards her, shouting, "Our Belial ... Looka who's here. Our Belial" Cissie, hurrying to the door and stepping over Nellie where she was crawling over the threshold, stood waiting on the rough terrace, and when Bella came up to her she put her arms about her and kissed her, then held her at arm's length, saying, "By! you're lookin' bonny." And Bella smirked a little and blinked and smiled her broad smile, then said, "Oh, but me legs are achin'; it's a walk and a half, I set off afore one. What time is it now?" And Cissie, leading the way into the room and looking at the clock, said, "Gone half-past two."

"Oh, crickeyl that'll mean I'll only have an hour 'cos I must get back afore dark. Cook skins you alive it you're late.... Ohi" She flopped down on the chair with a sigh, and Joe, standing by her side now, demanded, "You brought us anything, our Bella?" And Bella replied somewhat indignantly, "You're always on the get, our Joe; I've told you afore you can't bring stuff from there."

Joe stared at his sister, then looked at Charlotte and Sarah, and after an exchange of glances they went out; the excitement of seeing Bella had vanished. They should have remembered she never brought anything.

Cissie had been waiting anxiously for Bella's arrival, for this was her pay day. The food stock in the dwelling was very low. The mushrooms were finished and there was nothing to glean anywhere. She said, "I'll make a drop tea," and as she put the kettle on the fire, she added, "How are you getting' on?"

"Oh, all right." Bella wrinkled her nose.

"But they boss you about;

there's always somebody bossin' you about. " Bella now turned her head to the side and looked down at the child in the basket and remarked, " By! he's grown; he's getting' fat. " Then, her attention going off at a tangent, as was usual with her, she said.

"Do you get more stuff from the mill now since Matthew's livin' there?"

Cissie knelt down in front of the hearth and blew on the fire before she replied, "No, just about the same."

"Cissie."

"Yes, Bella?" Cissie turned on her knees towards her.

"I got me pay the day, Cissie."

"Yes, yes, I know you would have."

Bella now put her hand down and, lifting up her skirt, took from a pocket in her petticoat a piece of rag tied into a knot and a small package, and all the while she looked at Cissie. Even when she undid the knot in the rag she still kept her eyes on her sister. Then taking from the rag two shillings and sixpence she handed them to Cissie, saying hesitantly, "That's all I've left, Cissie. Well, you see" --she tossed her head"--it's the tally man. He comes round and everybody buys from him, an' it's only so much a month. But ... but I've got a petticoat ... look." She again turned back her skirt; then lifting her top petticoat she exposed a flimsy pink cotton garment edged with rough lace.

"It was three shillings. I only pay sixpence a month, but but this month I got a hair ribbon an' " --she looked down"--I ... I got this brooch." She now undid the button of her short jacket and exposed to view a gaudy piece of green tin with a red stone in the middle.

Cissie's first reaction was of deep anger. She wanted to take her hand and skelp Bella across the ear, knock her flying. She was well fed and housed and she hadn't spared a thought for her brothers and sisters up here on this bleak fell, but had spent nearly halt a month's wages on trash. Yet as she stared at Bella, looking at the face that was so like her own when eight years old, she thought. She can't help it;

she'll always be selfish.

And now Bella, sensing that the battle was almost over, proffered her peace offering. Handing Cissie the slim little parcel, she said, "I brought this for you, Cissie."

Cissie took the piece of paper and opened it and gazed down at a beautifully embroidered lawn hand 9

kerchief, and her eyes widened as she raised them to Bella, saying, "Where did you get this?"

Bella got to her feet and walked to the table, and there with her forefinger she drew a number of circles before saying, "The young mistress, she gave it to me. She's nice; she's my age and she wears beautiful clothes." She put her head on one side now and looked at Cissie, saying, "Aw, you should see, Cissie, silk and velvet. Aw, you should see."

"She really gave you this?"

"A-hah." She was drawing the circles again. "

"Cos as I said she's my age, an' I'm the youngest there."

Cissie was again looking at the handkerchief. This was no trash, this was a piece of fine lawn with an exquisite flower design worked on two corners and forming the initial C, her own initial.

Cissie was still young enough to appreciate such a gift. She forgot for a moment that they would be on short commons for the rest of the week and that she had wanted to slap Bella, for now, bending forward, she kissed her, saying, "Thanks. Thanks, Bella. But you're sure you don't want to keep it for yourself?"

"No, no; I want you to have it. I would like you to have nice things, our Cissie. If I had a lot of money I would buy you nice things."

Cissie now put her arm around Bella's shoulder and pulled her to her side; and then the kettle spluttered and she laughed and said, "We'll have a drop tea."

As she made it she thought to herself. God provides, there's always good with the bad. But the following day, if she had thought about this theory she would have questioned it, for over the fells again came the man she thought of now as "him from the House." She had, in a way, over the past few weeks, come to look upon him in the same light as she did the scraper who came searching for climbing boys. Yet it wasn't really him she was afraid of but his master.

There was a wind blowing which cut like a knife,

but in spite of this she kept him standing outside, the door pulled closed behind her, and before he could begin she said harshly, "It's no use, it's no good talkin', I told him, and no matter what he says it'll still be no use."

Cunningham looked at her pityingly; he was deeply sorry for her; but he was his master's man and his master's wishes would have to be obeyed. When there came a pause in her gabbling he said quietly, "As I said to you before, they have ways and means, and if His Lordship decides to take the matter to the justices you wouldn't have a leg to stand on...."

"The justices? What could they do? He's mine!"

"Yes, yes, I know; but he's also young Mister Clive's son, and His Lordship's grandson; and even if you protested he wasn't, which I know you wouldn't, but even if you did, there is the looks of the child to prove you wrong. He would only have to be held up to a portrait in the gallery and the kinship would be proved."

"I don't care. I don't care. I won't do it. I can't, I couldn't!" She now moved her head desperately, "He's all I've got of me own; or likely to have."

"You'll marry."

"I'll not!" The two words were shot at him, and he smiled tolerantly until she repeated, "I tell you I'll not, never. I know I won't, never." And now he was forced to take her seriously and he narrowed his eyes at her as he wondered if that one drunken act of the young master had killed marriage for her. If that were so, the tragedy was twofold.

A great gust of wind threatened to take off his hat and lift him bodily from the ground as it surged up under his cape, and he bent against it, saying, "His Lordship has increased his offer. He said he will give you twenty-five shillings a week and find you a habitation."

It was fantastic, utterly fantastic: twenty-five shillings a week and a habitation! But she had no hesitation in shaking her head, and, pulling the front of her bodice up round her neck because the wind was piercing her chest, she said, "It would be all the same if he made it thirty-five, or forty-five. Tell him that."

He looked at her sadly. She was shivering.

"Go inside," he said;

"you're cold. Good-day to you."

When she got inside she stood with her back to the door and looked to where the children were sitting in a circle on the mat around the fire and, in their midst, the basket with the child in it. They had been playing with him, making him laugh and gurgle. He laughed easily and rarely cried. He was a happy child, and this amazed her, for during the months she had carried him her spirit had been bent down in one way and another with misery. And now they wanted to take him from her he wanted to take him from her, that old man living in his mansion. He would pay people to wash him and look after him but they wouldn't give him love. You couldn't buy love. Twenty-five shillings a week, or all the gold in the world, couldn't buy the feeling he got from her and would always get from her.

She went to the basket and picked him up and held him tightly and wished she could press him back into her body and there keep him safe forever.

Joe said, "What did that man want, our Cissie?" and she said, "It was about that job again."

Joe looked at her slyly. He didn't believe what she said about the job.

Cunningham continued to come at intervals to the dwelling, but on his visits he merely passed the time of day with her and asked after her health. He did not mention the child or His Lordship; but each time she saw him she was filled with fear, and no matter what the weather she did not ask him inside. That is, until one wild day in early December when he saw her struggling towards the habitation, the child in her arms, and a girl whom he had not seen before dragging some way behind her.

November had been wet, bleak, and bitter. She had spent nearly every day of the first two weeks gathering wood; there were no branches stacked against the wall this year. She had not seen Matthew since his marriage on the day the child was born, and she reasoned it was just as well; but some part of her heart blamed him for not sending them the wood.

Then on the Tuesday of the third week the tree carrier's float appeared on the track. It was laden with branches and cuttings and two strange men unloaded it by the simple process of throwing the wood onto the road, and they called to her, "You'll manage, Missis?"

Going over to the track and looking down at the enormous heap of wood, she said gladly, "Yes, yes, I can manage. An' thanks."

It took them a full day working hard to stack the wood against the walls, and when it was done she stood back and looked at it in deep thankfulness and cried within herself, "Ohi Matthew. Matthew."

The following Sunday, when the boys arrived, Jimmy was wearing an overcoat He said that Matthew's mother had made it out of an old one of Mr. Turnbull's. He made them all laugh when he described how she first took him into the kitchen to measure him, but he, not knowing, thought he was going to get his ears boxed; and when she said she was going to make him a coat he said you could have knocked him down with a couple of iron spokes. He admitted to Cissie that he still didn't care for her much because she was bossy and in and out of the shop now that

Matthew wasn't there all the time, but still she was kinder to him and gave him more to eat.

So, on the whole, life was bearable; she was managing, and if it weren't for the fear of that man from the Hall she would, she told herself, have little to worry her. That was, until the day that Parson Hedley came to the dwelling and said she must go down at once to Pinewood Place because Bella was in trouble.

She stared open-mouthed at the tall, gangling figure of the parson, then whispered, "What kind of trouble?"

Parson Hedley drooped his head and shook it before replying, "She's she's been stealing."

"Bella stealin'l" Cissie's voice was no longer a whisper, it was loud and indignant and disbelieving.

"Our Bella wouldn't steal. Parson; our da brought us all up never to touch anything that didn't belong to us, an' I've kept tellin' them all. Bella wouldn't steal."

"But she has, Cissie." His voice was patient, and there was a silence before she asked, "What's she stole?"

"Garments I understand. There have been a number missing, and something was found under her bed, a handkerchief, belonging to one of the daughters of the house."

A handkerchief. Oh God! Oh God! She turned her head and looked towards the chest of drawers. There was a handkerchief in there, a fine lawn handkerchief, beautifully worked. Oh Bella. Oh our Bella, how could you! Of all the things that had happened over the past year this was the worst. She said now, "What will they do to her?"

"I don't rightly know, Cissie. She'll likely have to come up before the justices; she could be sent to the House of Correction. Being a girl she won't, I think, get the lash, and she's too young for deportation; it ... it will likely be the House of Correction."

The House of Correction! Oh dear God! Oh dear

God! the House of Correction! Bella wasn't bad, just feather-brained and wanting things.

Picking up the child, she wrapped it in an old piece of blanket, over which she draped the fawn shawl. She would have to take him with her because there was his feed and her breasts were full. She put her own shawl over her head and tied a bit of string round the neck to stop it blowing off in the wind, and she said to Sarah, who had been standing listening wide-eyed to what the minister was saying about Bella, "Look after them, won't you? And bar the door. You've got enough wood in to keep you going till I come back. And you, Joe, mind you don't go out, except to the midden, and come straight back. Do you hear?"

Joe nodded his head at her.

As she went to the door she turned again to Sarah and said, "Warm up the broth and have half a slice of bread each. No more, mind. Be good." Her eyes swept over the five of them. Then she was outside, her head down against the wind; and when she came to the track where the minister's dogcart was standing he said, "I can drive you as far as the crossroads, it'll be a help."

It was three and a half miles from the crossroads to the gates of Pinewood Place and as she walked up the drive to the house she could hardly put one foot before the other, so cold was she; her body seemed frozen both inside and out, but the child was still warm.

She rounded the drive outside the front door and went towards the kitchen quarters, and when she knocked on the door and a young girl not much older than Bella opened it, she said, "I'm Bella Brodie's sister."

"Oh, aye. Eehl Cookl" The girl turned round and called back into the room.

"Here's ... here's Bella's sister."

The cook came to the door. She was small and fat and her cheeks were red, and she said kindly enough,

"Aye. Well, come on in." And when Cissie entered the kitchen the warmth of it almost made her faint.

"Sit yersel down." The cook pointed to a chair, then added, "I'll get the housekeeper." And as she turned to the girl and was about to give her an order, she hesitated and, looking at Cissie again, asked, "Could you do with a sup tea?"

"Oh yes. Yes, please."

"Aye, I think you could." The cook scrutinized her for a moment, then added, "Do you like sugar?"

And at this Cissie merely nodded.

"There; drink it up." The cook pushed the mug into her hand, then watched her gulp at the scalding tea.

After a moment she asked, "How's the hairn?" And Cissie, after drawing in a long breath, answered, "He's all right, thank you."

The cook now turned to the girl and said, "You go and teller Then looking at Cissie again, she added, " You can take your time with that, it'll be five minutes afore she comes. She's like that; feels her position. " Bending closer to Cissie now, she said in an undertone, " "Tisn't Bella's fault; she was led. away by that young Nancy Price.

The things they found under her mattress, you wouldn't believe. But still, they haven't got them all. They only found the hanky under Bella's, but that was enough. Miss Christine has only four hankies of that kind left out of a dozen. It was the missing of the hankies that did it. You see, Miss Christine's grannie had made them, she has fine hands. "

At this moment the door opened and there entered a woman of medium height, wearing a trim black dress and white starched cap. As she crossed the room the cook returned to her business at the table and Cissie pulled herself to her feet, and the housekeeper stared at her for a moment before saying abruptly, "Disgraceful business." And Cissie answered, "Yes, Miss."

e

"My name is Mrs. Pain."

At this Cissie nodded.

"You know this is a very serious business."

"Yes."

"The mistress is indignant; she only engaged her out of pity for your circumstances."

"Yes, I know."

"And it's a way to be repaid, isn't it?"

"I'm ... I'm sorry. I never believed Bella would do such a thing; she was brought up decent."

"Decent! Thieving?" As the housekeeper's chest rose and fell so did her joined hands lying against it. She now said, "You are to take her back with you, but have her at the Justices' Court in Shields at ten o'clock on Monday morning. The mistress says to tell you, if she tries to run away you'll be held responsible, you understand?"

Again Cissie nodded, dumbly now.

"Come this way." She now turned and led the way out of the kitchen and across the yard to a low door, and there, unlocking it, she looked down some steps and called into the darkness, "You Bella! Come up here." And like an animal emerging out of the earth Bella crawled up the ladder. She was shivering from head to foot; her eyes were staring out of her head, and her whole face was swollen with crying. She closed her eyes against the light, but when she opened them again and saw Cissie her mouth fell into a wide gape and her tongue wobbled, and she cried as she flung herself forward, "Oh our Cissiel Our Cissie."

And Cissie, putting one arm about her, said brokenly, "There now.

There now. " All her anger against the child had vanished; the sight of her crawling out of the dark cellar had turned it against... them.

They were cruel and inhuman. But a dark cellar would be nothing to the treatment she would get in the House of Correction. There, she would be herded with terrible people. She trembled at the thought of such people: harlots, pickpockets, women who maimed their children so that they could take them begging, who put black beetles in half walnut shells and strapped them to babies' backs to keep them howling for pity, women who sold their children for awful purposes. Her da had told them all about the kind of people who got into the House of Correction as a deterrent never to do anything that would get themselves there. And now Bella was heading straight for it The housekeeper didn't allow them into the house again but ordered the kitchen maid to bring Bella's cloak and her possessions. Among the scanty few, there was the brooch, the ribbon, and the fancy petticoat she had bought from the tally man, and when Cissie saw these last articles she pointed to them and said harshly, "She won't want them.

Give them back to the traveler and tell him he can't be paid, so he'd better take them. " And on this she turned and walked across the wide yard, with Bella clinging to her skirt and crying all the while. And the housekeeper's voice followed them.

"Remember, ten o'clock on Monday morning at the Court House ... 1" Twice during the journey home she felt she was gong to faint; at one time she had to ask Bella to hold the child. Now, crossing the fells on the last stretch of the journey and the faintness attacking her again, she once more gave the child to Bella and sat down on a wet stone and drooped her head forward. It was then that Cunningham came up to her.

Bending over her, he said, "Can I help you?" and she lifted her head and muttered, "No, I'm all right;

it's only the cold got me. "

He looked at the girl holding the child. Her face was red and tear-stained. He looked back at Cissie and said, "I would get indoors as quickly as possible;

you could catch your death of cold in this wind, and it's begining to sleet. "

When she rose to her feet and swayed, he put his hand out and caught her elbow; and like that he walked her forward, while Bella followed behind with the child. And when they reached the dwelling and the children opened the door he led her inside and placed her on the chair, saying to them as they bustled around her, "I would leave your sister quiet for a moment, she is not feeling very well."

Cissie now looked towards Bella and said, "Put him in the basket."

Then turning to Sarah, who was standing by her side anxious and disturbed, she murmured, "Make me a drop tea, Sarah, will you?" And Sarah said quickly, "Aye, Cissie, aye."

After a moment she drew in a long breath and, looking up at the man said, "Thank you very much;

it was kind of you to help me. "

He knew he was being dismissed again, but he couldn't go until he had delivered his message, an ultimatum. And he was sorry to the heart that he had been called upon to do this, at this particular time, but His Lordship was getting impatient, and that was putting it mildly.

His Lordship, he felt, had become possessed of only one idea of late, and that was to have this child under his care. He had even gone to the extraordinary lengths of ordering all the nursery floor to be redecorated. This had set the whole household agog. There was one thing certain to Cunningham: His Lordship would have his grandson by fair means or foul, and so he must convey his message to her. But he must do it gently, for she was in a distressed state, that was evident, and on the point of collapse.

Merely in order to make conversation and to give her time to recover before he began to talk seriously to her, he said, "You have walked too far. Have you been to the hamlet?"

"No." She shook her head.

"To Shields."

"Shields?" His eyebrows moved upwards.

"That is a long way on any day, and the wind is piercing." He glanced towards Bella now, sensing that this child was the reason for the journey into Shields, and he said, "Is this another sister? I haven't seen her before." And when Bella's head drooped, Cissie explained hesitantly, "She's been away in service. I... I had to bring her back."

"Oh!"

Cissie now looked up at this man. Besides the minister, he was the only adult she had spoken to for weeks. Moreover, he was a man of some refinement, and undoubtedly he would have knowledge of the ways of the law. She would tell him about Bella, she had to tell somebody. She looked around at the children now and said, "Go in next door, you can leave Annie. An' you, Bella; go along o' them."

When they had obeyed her, Cissie looked up at the man and said, "Would you like to sit down a minute?" and she indicated a backless chair by the side of the table. When he had seated himself she said simply, "We're in trouble."

"I'm sorry to hear that. May I ask the nature of your trouble?"

"It's ... it's Bella. She was workin' in Mr. Braithwaite's in Pinewood House in Westoe, Shields, and" -she lowered her head against the shame of it for a moment, and now, her voice scarcely audible, she ended, "She's been stealin'."

"Stealing?" His expression showed that he was shocked.

She nodded.

"It wasn't her fault as far as I can gather. The girl above her in the laundry had been helpin' herself to all kinds of things and she gave her a handkerchief. She shouldn't have taken it because she knew it was the young mistress's, but she took it." She did not add that she had brought it home tor herself, but went on.

"And then she gave her another one. And when the things were missin' they found one of the handkerchiefs under her bed and ... and so they sent for me. And she's got to be at the Court

House on Monday by ten. What . what do you think they'll do to her? "

Cunningham was about to say soothingly, "Well, I shouldn't worry.

She's only a child--they won't be so hard on her; they'll likely put her in the House of Correction for a few weeks. " But he didn't say this because it came to him suddenly that this was a situation from which His Lordship could profit. The girl was unusual in that she seemed to love all these children, and they her, and he imagined that she would be prepared to do almost anything to save her sister from the punishment due to her because of her thieving.

His Lordship, although not dabbling in public life now, had himself at one time been a magistrate and dealt out justice; he knew all the ins and outs of law appertaining to local matters. Moreover, he still had many prominent friends and was held in deep respect by them. He had the power to set wheels in motion, or, on the other hand, to stop wheels turning. Very likely a word in the right place and the charge against this child would be eliminated. He would put the matter, as he saw it, to His Lordship. But now he paved the way for his master's success by shaking his head and saying, "People in Court, magistrates and their like, have great power. Very often justice becomes unjust in that the punishment they mete out far exceeds the crime. You say it was only two handkerchiefs, whereas this other girl stole many articles, yet I should imagine they will be made to share the blame."

He hated himself for a moment when he saw the whiteness of her face turn to grey, and, feeling slightly ashamed, he stood up to take his departure. He would leave her to stew in her worry, poor thing, then return tomorrow and lay before her the proposal.

When she looked up at him dumbly he said in a low tone, "I'm afraid I haven't been of much help, but I haven't much power." He seemed always to be stressing the word "power."

"It needs people like, well" --he spread his hands out"--like His Lordship to make an impression on such a case as this."

He had dropped the seed, and on this he nodded sympathetically at her and went out; and she stared at the door for some time before turning and looking down into the basket where the child lay.

There was a black frost in the night and it turned the sleet of the previous evening into moulded glass that covered every hump and hollow, hill and valley of the fells. It provided slides for Annie, Joe and Charlotte, and Nellie, who made them laugh as each attempt brought her flat on her bottom. But Sarah did not join in the sliding;

she sat in the dwelling working on two flour sacks to make capes for the younger ones, while Bella sat hunched close to the fire on a low crack et her joined hands pinned tightly between her knees; fear was imprinted on her face, and she burst into tears every time she was spoken to. That her terror was great was proved when she refused food, because above all things Bella loved food.

Cissie had risen in the middle of the night to comfort her when her sobbing had kept the others awake, and, taking her into the room and dose to the banked-down fire, she had held her as she would have Annie or Nellie and said, "There, there; it'll be all right," while Bella had asked her over and over again, "What will they do to me, Cissie?

Where will they send me? "

Today was Thursday; there was Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to go before she would know what they would do with Bella. She'd had wild thoughts about what she herself could do. She could take her somewhere and hide her. But then, that woman had said they would hold herself responsible; and if they took her what was to become of the others?

They would be taken to the House and all her efforts would have been in vain.

She had no hope in her mind that the justices would be lenient with Bella because of her age. Eight, they would say, was an age when she knew right from wrong. Just last year they had hanged a man for stealing a sheep, and two men had got five years for poaching. That was, after one of them had been shot all over by a spring gun which took out one of his eyes. But they were lucky; they could have been hanged because they were carrying a gun. But Bella hadn't stolen sheep, and she hadn't a gun, she had only taken two hankies, and they, back in the house, had only proof that she had taken one, and if they had come and searched the dwelling they wouldn't have found the second one for it was now buried two feet down in the soft mud near the river.

If only she had someone to talk to, someone to advise her. Not Parson Hedley; she felt he wouldn't be much comfort at this time because he was dealing with sin; and sin, even by the parson's standards, must always be punished. She wanted someone . someone like Matthew. If only Matthew would step by. It only it was Sunday and she could tell Jimmy. Jimmy would go back and tell him, then he would come. But even so it would be too late, 'cos Jimmy wouldn't see him until Monday now that he lived at the mill, and she had to be in Shields with Bella by ten o'clock on the Monday. She couldn't tell William to tell him in case she should overhear. William wasn't as wise as Jimmy.

She was sick with worry and striving; she felt very, very tired. She wished. What did she wish? That she would die in the night. Stupid thinking, weak thinking. What would become of the others if anything happened to her? But oh, she was tired, she was so tired these days that she kept telling herself that she was tired. The man came just after she had doled out the small helpings of broth to each of them. She had chastised Joe for gulping at his and not eating it slowly, warning him that there was no more for him, when there came the three small knocks on the door, and when she opened it and saw him standing there she felt for a moment glad to see him. He was, in a strange way, and in spite of her fear of him, almost like a friend. He glanced at the children standing round the table, then said, "I wonder if I could speak to you a moment;

would it be too cold for you to walk a little way? "

Her eyes narrowed slightly, and then she said, "No;

no. I'll just get me shawl. "

She went out with him and walked a few yards away from the dwelling;

then he stopped and looked at her and said, "I was greatly concerned about you yesterday and your trouble and I took the liberty of putting your case before His Lordship. As I said, it is only people such as His Lordship that have the power to alter the course of justice.

Well"-He paused and rubbed his gloved hands together and seemed disinclined to go on, but after a moment, when she remained silent, her eyes fixed tight on his face, he added, " His Lordship thinks that he could persuade Mr. Braithwaite to overlook the case against your sister, but . but he would expect you to do something for him in return. And"--he swallowed deeply-- " I don't need to have to put that into words, do I? "

She overlapped the shawl across her neck; the knuckles of her thumbs digging into the sides of her windpipe almost stopped her breathing;

then she moved her head twice, but in such a way that he did not take it as a refusal; he just waited while, unblinking, she stared at him.

And the seed he had dropped last night and that had been growing rapidly in her mind sprang into poisonous growth before her eyes, and as if defending herself against something visible she thrust out her hand and backed from him, crying, "No, nolI won't,"

He stood with his head bent, making no movement. After a while he looked at her and said sadly, "I ... I did my best. I was only trying to help you. And ... and I must give you a message. His Lordship wished it. He said that if you consented, the after he made to you in the beginning would still hold good. You would have twenty-five shillings a week as long as the child remained with him." He half turned from her now; then looking at her across his shoulders, he said, "There's not much time left. If ... if your sister isn't to come before the justice on Monday then His Lordship would have to set wheels in motion by tomorrow. If ... if you should change your mind you've only to come up to the House. The porter at either Lodge will admit you."

She watched him walking across the slippery earth towards the track.

His shoulders were stooped and his body conveyed a sadness to her that was reflected in herself a thousand fold

Bella cried in the night again, and Cissie got out of bed and dragged her away from the others and into the room, and there she shook her, while hissing at her, "Give over! Will you give over?" until Bella stopped and, her head hanging back on her shoulders, whimpered, "I'm frightened, our Cissie, I'm frightened." At this Cissie slowly lowered herself on to the chair and stared at her. Then reaching out, she took her hand and said, "Go on back to bed ... it'll be all right. I'll think of something." And Bella went back to bed somewhat comforted because it was the first time that Cissie had indicated that she would put things right, and like Joe, like them all, she believed that their Cissie could put things right. It was raining when at eleven o'clock in the morning she went out of the door with the child in her arms. The drops hit her face like pellets of ice, the wind lifted the shawl from around her shoulders and whirled it over her head and would have taken it off but for the string round her neck. Over the top of the child's shawl she had put a sack to keep the rain from soaking through.

She made her way to the North Lodge because it was nearer. The porter let her through the gate without a word, and she did not speak to him.

She walked up the long grass drive between the high tangle of brushwood along the side of the wall and the wood itself. She passed the place where she had climbed the wall that far-off day, the climbing that was the cause of her walking towards the Hall now. She kept on straight through die park until, in the far distance, like a grey cloud on the horizon she saw the house. She passed keepers who made no attempt to stop her. She walked across a garden and up broad steps on to a gravel drive, then up more steps, and then she was standing under the shelter of a porch and before a great black oak door studded with brass nails. Here she took the sack from off the child and dropped it on to the flags of the terrace. Then she pulled a handle attached to the wall and the bell clanged.

The man who opened the door to her was grandly dressed in brown knee-breeched livery. He stared at her for a moment, then stood aside.

He did not speak either, and she entered the Hall, thinking, I'm dreaming. It's like me dream of the white house; I'll wake up in a minute and everything will be all right The dream was emphasized by the grandeur of the place. There were life-sized iron men standing at each side of a great staircase; there were glass lights hanging from the ceiling and animals' heads sticking out from the walls, and beneath her feet was a carpet so thick that she couldn't hear herself walk. She was in a dim corridor now and staring at the back of the grandly dressed man. After he had knocked on a door, he opened it and stood aside to allow her to pass him. And now she was in a room that seemed to hold nothing but books. and him.

When the door closed behind her, he rose from his ii seat behind the desk and came towards her, and she wasn't to know that this was a most unusual procedure, nor the fact that he should turn a chair around for her to sit on. She wasn't to know that this lord, this great man, was finding this moment one of the most exciting in his life, nor yet that he felt in his heart a kind of sorrow for her.

Cunningham's reports on the girl had been of a person of extraordinary strength of character, loyalty, and kindliness, characteristics not usually found in one so young and placed as she was. He had wondered when listening to these reports, why it was that a girl of the common people should outshine his own blood in moral qualities.

In his position it was usual for him to speak first, especially when in contact with menials, but now he found it most difficult to open the conversation; also more difficult still to keep his eyes from the child in her arms. He thought afterwards, by way of excuse for himself, that the best and most glib people are reduced to inanities now and again, for he broke the silence by saying, "It's a wild day."

When she made no answer to this, simply con ting ued to stare at him, he turned from her and, going 'round the desk, sat down, hoping that from here he would feel more in charge of the situation. He took up a pen and wrote the date at the head of a piece of paper: Saturday, December 5th, 1833. Then, his eyes still cast down, he said, "I understand that your sister is in trouble?"

"Yes, Sir." She heard her voice coming as if from a long distance away.

"She was in the employ of Mr. Braithwaite of Pmewood Place, Westoe?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Well, you have no need to worry any further about the unfortunate business. I have already been in touch with Mr. Braithwaite and he is willing to drop the charge against her."

She did not say "Thank you, Sir" now; she just stared at him across the desk and held the child more tightly to her. Perhaps she held it too tightly for it began to whimper, and this brought His Lordship to his feet again and, coming slowly 'round the desk and looking down at her, he said, "May I see him?"

She pulled the fawn shawl back from the child's face, and then the under shawl and now he struggled to free his hands, and when he had pushed one up over the edge of the shawl he lay still, gazing at the face looking down on him; and then he smiled at it.

There was a slight constriction in His Lordship's throat. He moved his thin blue lips one over the other; then dragging his eyes from his grandson's face he looked at the mother and said gently, "You need have no more worry concerning him, except for his loss and I wish you to believe me when I say I understand how you feel about this matter.

But he is my grandson and it is my wish that he be brought up as such. " He paused, then went on, " The agreement was that you should have an allowance of twenty-five shillings per week; this will be paid to you in advance every month starting as from today. Is there anything you would like to ask me? "

Although she wanted to say, "Will I be able to see him?" she shook her head, for she knew that this was a fruitless question; once they took him from her arms she would never see him again; he'd be in this fortress surrounded by scores of people, all making sure that she never saw him again.

Lord Fischel stared down at her. He had been prepared to ask her to put her cross to a paper that he had roughly drawn up, but he saw that she was in great distress and emphasizing such a finality might make her cause a scene, even attempt to go back on her word. The best thing to do was to get the child away from her. Once this was done, the business would be ended. He stretched out his hand and rang the bell, and when Hatton answered the summons he said, "Fetch Mrs. Hatton to me, please."

Mrs. Hatton came into the room within seconds and His Lordship with a small wave of his hand indicated that she should take the child.

When the woman stooped down, her hands outstretched, she paused, for the look in the girl's eyes was like a knife cutting into her, and when she put her hands under the child she had to give a slight tug before the girl released her hold on it.

As the housekeeper walked towards the door Cissie now asked in a whisper, "Can I have his shawl?" and His Lordship, again with a motion of his hand, indicated that the housekeeper should remove the shawl, thinking at the same time that it would be one less article to be burned.

Impatient now that she should be gone and that he could go and see the child, hold the child. His Lordship rang the bell again, saying, "You must have some refreshment before you return. Hatton will take you to the kitchen."

A moment later Hatton came into the room and received the order from his master; and Cissie, hugging the shawl to her, rose to her feet, but once she was standing upright she had the strange idea that she was about to sink into the earth. And then she knew she was going to do just that, for a great void appeared in the floor and as she fell forward into it she grabbed at His Lordship and tried to take him with her while shouting at him, "All for two lawn hankiesi ... You got him for two lawn hankies."

Two hours later, the general coach, used for luggage and such work, drew up on the path below the habitation, and Cunningham, getting out, assisted her down on to the muddy road; then with his hand on her elbow helped her over the fell and into the dwelling. After sitting her down he spoke to the tallest girl, saying, "Look after your sister. She needs to rest, she's not feeling well." Then patting Cissie on the shoulder, he stared at her in deep compassion for a moment before turning away.

When the door had closed on him the children gathered round her, the older ones not asking where Richard was, but Annie, with no inhibitions and not old enough to sense the tragedy, demanded, "Where's our Richard, our Cissie? Where've you left him?" And Cissie, the muscles of her white face twitching, looked down at Annie but didn't answer her; then after a further moment of gazing at her closed fist, she slowly opened it and there on her palm lay five golden sovereigns, and as they all stared at them in unbelievable wonder, for this was real money, a great, great deal of real money, her mind lifted her back to the day when Jimmy said, "I'll teach our Joe to set a trap an' you'll never want more."

Matthew heard about Cissie Brodie banding her baby over to the big house when Straker, the miller's carrier man, returned from delivering the weekly flour and oats to the Hall. He could barely wait to get William out of the mill on an errand so he could tell his master the gossip.

Matthew was loading sacks on to a low dray cart;

he was walking from the scale bench to the cart, the sack on his shoulder, then at one and the same time he saw Rose pause just within the wheelhouse. She had a can in her hand full of steaming tea for Straker and William at their break, and she was brought to a stop, as he himself was, when he heard Straker say excitedly, "Place is agog with it. Took the child up yesterday mornin' an' handed it over, then, they tell me, fell flat on her face, dead out at His Lordship's || feet. They say it's been goin' on for months. The valet's been the go-between. His Lordship got the place all ready for the hairn weeks ago, then nothin' happened. Nobody knows as yet what brought it to a head. They say she seemed chary, but was only likely waitin' for him to raise the price. They say she went out with a handful and she was sent home in the coach. Think of that now. A drab from the fells being sent home in the coach."

Matthew flung the sack off his back with such a vehement toss that the heavy cart bounced beneath it and it brought Rose's eyes round to him, and she stared hard at him for a moment before walking to the bench and putting down the can. Then going to her father who was making no laughing retort this morning to Straker's tale, she said, "How do you be now?" and he answered dully, "So-so. I think I want a good dose of physic."

As she left him and came across the mill floor again, she passed behind Matthew and said, "Your drink's waiting."

He did not answer her, not even to incline his head, but went on loading the dray, because when this was finished he'd be able to go.

It was the arrangement that he would work until half-past nine in the morning at the mill. This meant he had done a good three hours' labor before he returned to the shop and started on his own work. His three hours' labor was his means of buying a share in the mill. Miller Watson, for all his laughter and joviality, had a business head on his shoulders.

Matthew scraped the slush off his boots on a grating in the wall, then wiped them hard on a mat inside the door before entering the kitchen.

Rose was standing at the table buttering a large brown bannock. She did not look at him until after she had been to the hob and brought the teapot and poured out his mug of tea; then pushing the mug and the plate across the table to where he was sitting she said, "She sold her baim then?"

When he didn't reply, just stared at her, a hard, cold look in his eyes, she leant over the table towards him, her voice low but her words grating, and repeated, "I said, she sold her hairn then? Didn't you hear me? An' got a tidy sum for it, I understand." When still he didn't speak she went on, "Why look so thunderstruck if what you said was true. You said 'twasn't yours.... You don't know whose it was, do you, yours, his, or anybody else's ... ?"

She didn't finish, for the hot mug of tea went spinning across the table and the contents over one of her hands, and as she cried out and held her hand tightly under her oxter he stood gripping the edge of the table. His shoulders hunched, he cried with deep bitterness.

"I

tell you again it wasn't mine, but God! it I'd known what I know now it would have been. Do you hear? It-wouldhavebeeni" She was still holding her scalded hand under her armpit as she hissed at him, " I'll tell me father you're not doing your duty by me. I will, I will. "

"You do that. You do that." He made to go towards the door, when she now demanded, "Where you goin'?"

Turning slowly, he looked at her, saying.

"It's me time for going, isn't it? I've done me stint."

"You know what I mean, Matthew Tumbull. You know what I mean."

Yes he knew what she meant. He stared at her. She was his wife, and he knew what she meant. Her skin was blotched blue with anger. Aye, and frustration. That was his fault, he supposed, but, God above, he couldn't help it. He had tried; no man had tried more, but he just couldn't give her what she wanted;

as much as his own body cried out for satisfaction he just couldn't take it from hers. After that first week he had been sickened to the soul of him. If he had continued to take her it would have been as an animal did, and he was no animal. Even the sight of her face on the pillow beside him turned his stomach. But he wasn't crying out loud about anything, he had only himself to blame for the pickle he was in. Aye, and his folks, and young William, and young Jimmy, and the other seven of them back there.

She said now, "If I was to tell me father he would cut you out, I know he would. There's no written agreement; he could do it an you'd be back in your little tin pot shop. And what's more, he'd make you support me; besides which he'd send William packin'. Aye, he would that."

He gave a mirthless, derisive laugh now as he said, "Well, if he did, that would be no hardship to her now, would it, for if she's sold her hairn and been well paid for it, she can afford to keep the lot of them. Funny, isn't it... ?" His bitterness now making him cruel, he poked his head forward and ended, "And to think it was because she couldn't afford to keep them that I married you."

He turned from her vicious yet deeply hurt look and went out; and, going into the open barn, he lifted his coat from the rack, put it on, donned his tall hat which he pulled down well over his brow, and mounted the cart and, crying briskly, "Gee-up there!" took the horse out of the yard at a trot. He hadn't spoken to the miller, which wasn't unusual;

but the miller hadn't spoken a word to him, and that was unusual.

He did not make for home but took the fell road. Twice he had to dismount and get behind the cart and, yelling at the horse to pull harder, help ease the wheels out of mud-filled pot holes. The farther he went on the fells the more grey and desolate the scene became.

There was a deadly body-chilling bleakness everywhere that matched the feeling inside him.

As he mounted the slope he saw Joe and Sarah carrying armsful of wood into the dwelling. In the noise of the wind they hadn't heard the cart draw up, nor had they observed him mounting the slope, so they closed the door after them.

He hesitated before knocking and it was Cissie herself who opened it, and he read on her expression surprise and what he could only translate as disappointment, and this latter emotion was borne home to him by the sudden drooping of her shoulders.

"Hello," he said.

She did not speak, but bowed her head and stood aside so that he could enter. Then the children were around him, all but Bella and Sarah;

Sarah because she didn't like Matthew Turnbull as she once had done--she hadn't liked him since he had married the woman from the mill instead of their Cissie--and Bella because she was still in a state of shock and dread, and she couldn't as yet take in the fact that she wasn't going to the House of Correction.

As the children scampered about asking him questions about William and the mill, Cissie knelt before the fire and thrust potatoes into the hot ashes. Her heart was beating rapidly. This was the first time she had seen him since his marriage. He looked older, grey in the face, but that could be the bleakness of the weather. When the knock had come on the door she had thought it was the man and he had come to ask her to go back to the Hall because they couldn't get the child to stop crying. All night she had prayed that it would cry and wail its loss of her, as she was crying and wa fling inside because of her empty arms, her empty life. She had six of them here to look after but without the child they no longer seemed her kin, her flesh. She prayed that this feeling would pass and she would love them again as she had done before she had gone through the Lodge gates and over that park;

she prayed that she would not hate Bella, that she would be able to keep her hand off her when she did stupid things.

Although her heart was beating painfully there was no joy in her at seeing Matthew. He was standing to the side of her now; she could see his feet out of the corner of her eye and when he said, "Can you step outside a minute?" she sat back on her haunches, dusted the ashes from her hands and replied simply, "No."

There came a quietness on the room for a moment;

then Sarah began to bustle, pushing at one and then another. Saying, "Come on, you's," she shepherded them out of the room and into the cave, Annie protesting loudly the while, "No, our Sarahl I want near the fire."

Matthew, dropping on his hunkers and his voice low pitched, said, "I just heard; I'm sorry."

At this she put the palms of her hands together and nipped them between her knees and rocked her body gently backwards and forwards.

"What made you do it? If you were that hard up you should have told William to tell me on the quiet;

you know I would have come up with something. "

Her body still rocked.

"Cissie!" His arm flashed in front of her and gripped her shoulders and swung her round to him;

and now, his face close to hers, he whispered, "Don't hold it against me, girl. I had to do what I had to do. I told you, I warned you, an' if it's any satisfaction to you I'm paying the price for it. Hell couldn't be worse. Look at me." His voice was a thin, hard whisper, and when she raised her eyes to his he saw they were glazed with tears and when slowly they spilled over her lids and down her cheeks he wagged his head from side to side and gritted his teeth. After a moment he swung off his hunkers and dropped on to his knees in front of her, and his hands slid down from her arms and brought her hands into his, and he asked gently, "Couldn't you get him back?" And when she shook her head, he said, "What straits were you in to let him go then?"

Her voice a low mutter, her head still bent, she said, "" Twas Bella; she stole. She was due to go before the justice on Monday. They would have sent her to the House of Correction. She . she was terrified out of her wits, an' . an' then him in the Hall.

He'd been after the child for weeks but I wouldn't let him go. Then then I was told that he could get Bella off, and would do, but only if I let him have the hairn. "

She looked at him now. His jaws were tight clenched, his brows meeting low over his nose, but he said nothing, and she turned towards the fire again and, reaching out, turned one of the potatoes, and when she sat back on her haunches she said on a deep sigh, "If he hadn't of got him that way he would have some other. He was going to take it to Court to daim him." She lifted up her eyes to his again and, not knowing that her words were like knives being thrown at him, she said, "I loved him so, an' I miss him. I don't feel I'd just had him five months. It's funny, but it's as if I'd had him all my life. And now there's nothing more to live for."

His head was down and his cheekbones were showing white through his weatherbeaten skin. He had never seen the child and he'd had no wish to, and in the deep socket of his heart he knew he was glad she had lost it. Yet her loss created an agony inside himself. He wanted to comfort her, just hold her, stroke her hair, say her name, gently over and over again as he did in the night, "Cissiel Cissiel Cissiel" He bent dose towards her again, saying, "I'll call in from time to time.

It may be late on when I manage it, but. but I'll manage it somehow. "

Her reaction to his proposal startled him, for she jumped to her feet and reaching out to the mantel piece she turned a little wooden box upside down onto her palm, then thrust out her hand holding the five sovereigns saying, "We'll not be stayin' here all that long, we'll be getting' a house out of it. Look; I have that every month. As long as he has the child

I've got that. It's a fortune . isn't it? A fortune. " There was bitterness in her voice; there was accusation in her eyes.

They stared at each other for a time. Then he rose, turned slowly from her and went out.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon when William came panting into the wheel shop and, holding his side, gasped at Matthew, "She says ... Missis says you've got to come, the master's bad," and immediately Matthew mounted the cart and, having pulled William up beside him, rode pell-mell back to the mill.

The light was fading as he entered the yard and Straker was standing under the platform of the threshing floor, but he didn't move towards them to take the horse, nor did he speak; and Matthew ran across the yards and entered the kitchen.

The lamp was lit and in its light he saw Jess Watson lying full length on the wooden saddle set at right angles to the fireplace, and by his side in the leather chair sat Rose. When she turned her face towards him, it looked twisted as if she were crying, but her eyes were dry and as he slowly approached her she said, "He's dead. He ... he came in, he said he had a pain, he ... he couldn't bear it, it was in his chest, and then ... and then he lay down and ... and he just died."

In this moment Matthew was as shocked as she was. He stood looking down on the miller, his hair and face still covered with flour, his mouth open, his eyes staring upwards. He thought, he cannot be gone, he was all right this morning. Then thinking back he remembered him complaining about his stomach. But he could not believe the evidence of the staring eyes and the gaping mouth and he laid his ear against the floured chest, but there was no movement. Then he stood up and looked at Rose, and she at him, and,

putting out his hand and raising her to her feet, he said gently, "Come away. I'll get the doctor."

At this, she said low in her throat, "It's too late for that," and he replied, "In cases like this, you've got to have him. Come into the parlor an' sit down, I'll see to things,"

Five days later they buried the miller. It was a well attended funeral, for he was widely known and respected; and after the mourners had eaten and drunk their fill in the parlor, they lingered on, curious to know what the miller had left to his daughter. But the lawyer did not read the will until they had all left, and there was only the miller's daughter and her husband present, for the miller had been an only child as the miller's daughter was an only child.

The will had been drawn up six years previously and the miller left everything he possessed to his daughter. The mill and two acres of land, which was freehold, seven terraced houses in Shields, a row of cottages in Jarrow and, what even came as a surprise to Rose, three houses in Newcastle, which were situated in Mosley Street where the Theatre Royal and the post office were. The houses were each of four stories;

one was leased to a bank. These three houses, the lawyer pointed out, were of substantial value and were in fact equal to all the rest of the property put together, including the mill. He congratulated Mrs.

Tumbull in being placed in very favorable circumstances.

The lawyer gone, the house quiet, Matthew took a lantern and walked round the mill. He went up on to the threshing floor and held the lantern high. He walked round the grain store, the weighing room, the stables, then he crossed the yard and walked along the icy road to the full extent of the land. Still on the road, he skirted the house and, again swinging the lantern high, he looked up and down its face which held eight good windows; then he went in through a side door and along a passage and into the little room that Jess Watson had used to hold his bills and receipts, together with the strong iron-bound box that he took into Newcastle once a quarter and emptied the contents into a bank. He held the lantern up to show the small sloping-lidded desk, the leather chair, the empty fireplace, and above it on the wall the long pipe rack holding up to fifteen clay pipes. Finally, his eyes rested on the blank wall facing him. It was made for book shelves.

He'd bring his books in here; this would be his office.

He was now the miller, he was now master of this house, and not only this house but the property stemming from it. He, Matthew Tumbull, was a rich man. Jess Watson may have left his fortune to his daughter, but his daughter was married to him and a wife's property was her husband's property. He was a rich man. Moreover, he'd have the vote now.

He put the lantern on the floor and sat down in the chair, and slowly his elation seeped from him and he saw again a palm held out with five golden sovereigns in it.

Jess Watson had not died soon enough.

BOOK FOUR 1836

The Return

"Grandpapa."

"Yes, Richard?"

"You said I have a papa and he's in a big ship."

"Yes, I did."

"When will the big ship be coming back?"

"I'm not quite sure, Richard; but soon, soon. Do you like your new rocking-horse?"

"Oh yes. Grandpapa. Watch me. Look, I can gal lop. When will I be able to have a real horse. Grand papa?"

"Oh; let me see.

"When you are five years old you shall have a pony."

"How long will that be. Grandpapa?"

"Oh, not so very long, two years."

"Two years? How long is one year. Grandpapa?"