Joan went about her usual tasks, holding the baby in her arms. She prepared the evening meal with Liz’s assistance and they sat down to eat it together. But Liz had little appetite. Indeed neither of them ate much and both were more than usually silent. A shadow of reserve had lately fallen between them.

  After the meal was ended they drew their seats to the hearth again, and Liz went back to her brooding over the fire. Joan, lulling the child, sat and watched her. All Liz’s beauty had returned to her. Her soft, rough hair was twisted into a curly knot upon her small head, her pretty, babyish face was at its best of bloom and expression—that absent, subdued look was becoming to her.

  “Theer’s honest men as mought ha’ loved her,” said Joan, inwardly. “Theer’s honest men as would ha’ made her life happy.”

  It was just as she was thinking this that Liz turned round to her.

  “If she lived to be a woman,” with a gesture toward the child; “if she lived to be a woman, do yo’ think as sh’d remember me if—if owt should happen to me now?”

  “I conna tell,” Joan answered, “but I’d try to mak’ her.”

  “Would yo’?” and then she dropped her face upon her hands. “It ud be best if she’d forget me,” she said. “It ud be best if she’d forget me.”

  “Nay, Liz,” said Joan. “Tha’rt out o’ soarts.”

  “Ay, I am,” said the girl, “an’ I need be. Eh, Joan! tha’rt a good wench. I wish I wur loike thee.”

  “Tha need na, lass.”

  “But I do. Tha’d nivver go wrong i’ th’ world. Nowt could mak’ thee go wrong. Tha’rt so strong like. An’ tha’rt patient, too, Joan, an’ noan loike the rest o’ women. I dunnot think—if owt wur to happen me now—as tha’d ha’ hard thowts o’ me. Wouldst tha?” wistfully.

  “Nay, lass. I’ve been fond o’ thee, an’ sorry fur thee, and if tha wur to dee tha mayst mak’ sure I’d noan be hard on thee. But tha art na goin’ to dee, I hope.”

  To her surprise the girl caught her hand, and, pulling it down upon her knee, laid her cheek against it and burst into tears.

  “I dunnot know; I mought, or—or—summat. But nivver tha turn agen me, Joan,—nivver tha hate me. I am na loike thee,—I wur na made loike thee. I conna stand up agen things, but I dunnot think as I’m so bad as foaks say!”

  When this impassioned mood passed away, she was silent again for a long time. The baby fell asleep upon Joan’s breast, but she did not move it,—she liked to feel it resting there; its close presence always seemed to bring her peace. At length, however, Liz spoke once more.

  “Wheer wur thy feyther goin’ wi’ Spring an’ Braddy?” she asked.

  Joan turned a pale face toward her.

  “Wheer did yo’ see him wi’ Spring an’ Braddy?”

  “Here,” was Liz’s reply. “He wur here this afternoon wi’ ’em. They did na coom in, though,—they waited i’ th’ road, while he went i’ th’ back room theer fur summat. I think it wur a bottle. It wur that he coom fur, I know, fur I heerd Braddy say to him, ‘Hast getten it?’ an’ thy feyther said, ‘Ay,’ an’ th’ other two laughed as if they wur on a spree o’ some soart.”

  Joan rose from her chair, white and shaking.

  “Tak’ th’ choild,” she said, hoarsely. “I’m goin’ out.”

  “Out!” cried Liz. “Nay, dunnot go out. What ails thee, Joan?”

  “I ha’ summat to do,” said Joan. “Stay tha here with th’ choild.” And almost before she finished speaking she was gone, and the door had closed behind her.

  There would be three of them against one man. She walked faster as she thought of it, and her breath was drawn heavily.

  Lowrie bent down in his hiding-place, smiling grimly. He knelt upon the grass behind a hedge at the road-side. He had reached the place a quarter of an hour before, and he had chosen his position as coolly as if he had been sitting down to take his tramp dinner in the shade. There was a gap in the hedge and he must not be too near to it or too far from it. It would be easier to rush through this gap than to leap the hedge; but he must not risk being seen. The corner where the other men lay concealed was not far above him. It was only a matter of a few yards, but if he stood to wait at one turn and the engineer took the other, the game would escape.

  So he had placed his comrades at the second, and he had taken the first.

  “I’d loike to ha’ th’ first yammer at him,” he had said, savagely. “Yo’ can coom when yo’ hear me.”

  As he waited by the hedge, he put his hand out stealthily toward his “knob-stick” and drew it nearer, saying to himself:

  “When I ha’ done settlin’ wi’ him fur mysen, I shall ha’ a bit o’ an account to settle fur her. If it’s his good looks as she’s takken wi’, she’ll be noan so fond on him when she sees him next, I’ll warrant.”

  He had hit upon the greater villainy of stopping short of murder,—if he could contain himself when the time came.

  At this instant a sound reached his ears which caused him to start. He bent forward slightly toward the gap to listen. There were footsteps upon the road above him—footsteps that sounded familiar. Clouds had drifted across the sky and darkened it, but he had heard that tread too often to mistake it now when every nerve was strung to its highest tension. A cold sweat broke out upon him in the impotence of his wrath.

  “It’s th’ lass hersen,” he said. “She’s heerd summat, an’ she’s as good as her word!”—with an oath.

  He got up and stood a second trembling with rage. He drew his sleeve across his forehead and wiped away the sweat, and then turned round sharply.

  “I’ll creep up th’ road an’ meet her afore she reaches th’ first place,” he panted. “If she sees th’ lads, it’s aw up wi’ us. I’ll teach her summat as she’ll noan forget.”

  He was out into the Knoll Road in a minute more.

  “I’ll teach her to go agen me,” he muttered.

  “I’ll teach her, by—” But the sentence was never ended. There was a murmur he did not understand, a rush, a heavy rain of blows, a dash of something in his face that scorched like liquid fire, and with a shriek, he fell writhing.

  30. The Slip of Paper

  A minute after there rushed past Joan, in the darkness, two men,— stumbling and cursing as they went, out of breath, horror-stricken and running at the top of their speed.

  “It wur Lowrie hissen, by—!” she heard one say, as he dashed by.

  “Feyther! Feyther, wheer are yo’? Feyther, are yo’ nigh me?” she cried, for she heard both the blows and the shriek.

  But there came no answer to her ear. The rapid feet beating upon the road, their echo dying in the distance, made the only sound that broke the stillness. There was not even a groan. Yet a few paces from her, lay a battered, bleeding form. There was no starlight now, she could see only the vague outline of the figure, which might be that of either one man or the other. For an instant, the similarity in stature which had deceived his blundering companions, deceived her also; but when she knelt down and touched the shoulder, she knew it was not the master who lay before her.

  “It’s feyther hissen,” she said, and then she drew away her hand, shuddering. “ It’s wet wi’ blood,” she said. “It’s wet wi’ blood!”

  He did not hear her when she spoke; he was not conscious that she tried to raise him; his head hung forward when she lifted him; he lay heavily, and without motion, upon her arms.

  “They ha’ killed him!” she said. “How is it, as it is na him?”

  There was neither light nor help nearer than “The Crown” itself, and when her brain became clearer, she remembered this. Without light and assistance, she could do nothing; she could not even see what hurt he had sustained. Dead or dying, he must lie here until she had time to get help. She took off her shawl, and folding it, laid his head gently upon

  it Then she put her lips to his ear.

  “Feyther,” she said, “I’m goin’ to bring help to thee. If tha con hear

  me, stir thy hond.”

  He did not stir it, so she disengaged her arm as gently as possible,

  and, rising to her feet, went on her way.

  There were half a dozen men in the bar-room when she pushed the

  door inward and stood upon the threshold. They looked up in

  amazement.

  “Those on yo’ as want to help a deeing mon,” she said, “come wi’

  me. My feyther’s lyin’ in the Knoll Road, done to death.”

  All were astir in a moment. Lanterns and other necessaries were

  provided, and bearing one of these lanterns herself, Joan led the way. As she stepped out onto the pavement a man was passing, and,

  attracted by the confusion, turned to the crowd:

  “What is the matter?” he asked.

  “There’s a mon been killed up on th’ Knoll Road,” answered one

  of the colliers. “It’s this lass’s feyther, Dan Lowrie.”

  The man strode into the light and showed an agitated face.

  “Killed!” he said, “Dan Lowrie!”

  It was Fergus Derrick.

  He recognized Joan immediately, and went to her.

  “For pity’s sake,” he exclaimed, “don’t go with them. If what they

  say is true, this is no place for you. Let me take you home. You ought

  not—”

  “It wur me,” interrupted Joan, in a steady voice, “as found him.”

  He could not persuade her to remain behind, so he walked on by

  her side. He asked her no questions. He knew enough to understand

  that his enemy had reaped the whirlwind he had himself sown.

  It was he who knelt first by the side of the prostrate man, holding

  the lantern above the almost unrecognizable face. Then he would have

  raised the lifeless hand, but Joan, who had bent down near him,

  stopped him with a quick move.

  “Dunnot do that,” she faltered, and when he looked up in surprise,

  he comprehended her meaning, even before she added, in a passionate

  undertone, the miserable words:

  “Ther’s blood on it, as might ha’ bin yo’re own.”

  “Theer’s a bottle here,” some one cried out suddenly. “A bottle as I just set my foot on. Chaps, theer’s been vitriol throwed.”

  “Ay,” cried another, “so theer has; chaps, look yo’ here. Th’ villains has vitriolled him.”

  They laid him upon the shutter they had brought, and carried him homeward. Joan and Derrick were nearest to him as they walked.

  They were not far from the cottage, and it was not long before the light glimmered through the window upon them. Seeing it, Joan turned to Derrick suddenly.

  “I mun hurry on before,” she said. “I mun go and say a word to Liz. Comin’ aw at onct th’ soight ud fear her.”

  Reaching the house, she pushed the door open and went in. Everything was so quiet that she fancied the girl must have gone to bed.

  “Liz,” she said aloud. “Liz!”

  Her voice fell with an echoing sound upon the silent room. She looked at the bed and saw the child lying there asleep. Liz was not with it. She passed quickly into the room adjoining and glanced around. It was empty. Moved by some impulse she went back to the bed, and in bending over the child, saw a slip of paper pinned upon its breast, and upon this paper Joan read, in the sprawling, uncertain hand she knew so well:

  “Dunnot be hard on me, Joan, dunnot—Good-bye!”

  When Derrick entered the door, he found Joan standing alone in the centre of the room, holding the scrap of paper in her hand.

  31. The Last Blow

  “He won’t live,” the doctor said to Derrick. “He’s not the man to get over such injuries, powerful as he looks. He has been a reckless, drunken brute, and what with the shock and reaction nothing will save him. The clumsy rascals who attacked him meant to do him harm enough, but they have done him more than they intended, or at least the man’s antecedents will help them to a result they may not have aimed at. We may as well tell the girl, I suppose—fine creature, that girl, by the way. She won’t have any sentimental regrets. It’s a good riddance for her, to judge from what I know of them.”

  “I will tell her,” said Derrick.

  She listened to him with no greater show of emotion than an increased pallor. She remembered the wounded man only as a bad husband and a bad father. Her life would have been less hard to bear if he had died years ago, but now that death stood near him, a miserable sense of desolateness fell upon her, inconsistent as such a feeling might seem.

  The village was full of excitement during this week. Everybody was ready with suggestions and conjectures, everybody wanted to account for the assault. At first there seemed no accounting for it at all, but at length some one recollected that Lowrie had been last seen with Spring and Braddy. They had “getten up a row betwixt theirsens, and t’others had punsed him.”

  The greatest mystery was the use of vitriol. It could only be decided that it had not been an ordinary case of neighborly “punsing,” and that there must have been a “grudge” in the matter. Spring and Braddy had disappeared, and all efforts to discover their whereabouts were unavailing.

  On the subject of Liz’s flight Joan was silent, but it did not remain a secret many hours. A collier’s wife had seen her standing, crying, and holding a little bundle on her arm at the corner of a lane, and having been curious enough to watch, had also seen Landsell join her a few minutes later.

  “She wur whimperin’ afore he coom,” said the woman, “but she cried i’ good earnest when he spoke to her, an’ talked to him an’ hung back as if she could na mak’ up her moind whether to go or no. She wur a soft thing, that wench, it wur allus whichivver way th’ wind blowed wi’ her. I could nivver see what that lass o’ Lowrie’s wanted wi’ her. Now she’s getten th’ choild on her honds.”

  The double shock had numbed Joan. She went about the place and waited upon her father in a dull, mechanical way. She said but little to the curious crowd, who, on pretence of being neighborly, flocked to the house. She had even had very little to say to Anice. Perhaps after all, her affection for poor Liz had been a stronger one than she had thought.

  “I think,” Grace said gently to Anice, “that she does not exactly need us yet.”

  He made the remark in the Rector’s presence and the Reverend Harold did not agree with him.

  “I am convinced that you are mistaken, Grace,” he said. “You are a little too—well, too delicately metaphysical for these people. You have sensitive fancies about them, and they are not a sensitive class. What they want is good strong doctrine, and a certain degree of wholesome frankness. They need teaching. That young woman, now—it seems to me that this is the time to rouse her to a sense of her—her moral condition. She ought to be roused, and so ought the man. It is a great pity that he is unconscious.”

  Of Joan’s strange confession of faith, Anice had told him something, but he had been rather inclined to pronounce it “emotional,” and somehow or other could not quite divest himself of the idea that she needed the special guidance of a well-balanced and experienced mind. The well-balanced and experienced mind in view was his own, though of course he was not aware of the fact that he would not have been satisfied with that of any other individual. He was all the more disinclined to believe in Joan’s conversion because his interviews with her continued to be as unsatisfactory as ever. Her manner had altered; she had toned down somewhat, but she still caused him to feel ill at ease. If she did not defy him any longer or set his teachings at naught, her grave eyes, resting on him silently, had sometimes the effect of making his words fail him; which was a novel experience with the Rector.

  In a few days Lowrie began to sink visibly. As the doctor predicted, the reaction was powerful, and remedies were of no avail. He lay upon the bed, at times unconscious, at times tossing to and fro in delirium. During her watching at the bedside, Joan learned the truth. Sometimes he fancied himself tramping the Knoll Road homeward through the rain, and then he muttered sullenly of the “day” that was coming to him, and the vengeance he was returning to take; sometimes he went through the scene with Joan herself, and again, he waited behind the hedge for his enemy, one moment exultant, the next striving to struggle to his feet with curses upon his lips and rage in his heart, as he caught the sound of the advancing steps he knew so well. As he went over these scenes again and again, it was plain enough to the listener that his vengeance had fallen upon his own head.

  The day after he received his hurts a collier dropped into “The Crown” with a heavy stick in his hand.

  “I fun this knob-stick nigh a gap i’ th’ hedge on th’ Knoll Road,” he said. “It wur na fur fro’ wheer they fun Lowrie. Happen them chaps laid i’ wait fur him an’ it belongs to one o’ ’ em.”

  “Let’s ha’ a look at it,” said a young miner, and on its being handed to him he inspected it closely.

  “Why!” he exclaimed. “It’s Lowrie’s own. I seed him wi’ it th’ day afore he wur hurt. I know th’ shape o’ th’ knob. How could it ha’ coom theer?”

  But nobody could guess. It was taken to Joan and she listened to the story without comment. There was no reason why they should be told what she had already discovered.

  When Lowrie died, Anice and Grace were in the room with Joan. After the first two days the visitors had dropped off. They had satisfied their curiosity. Lowrie was not a favorite, and Joan had always seemed to stand apart from her fellows, so they were left to themselves.

  Joan was standing near the bed when there came to him his first and last gleam of consciousness. The sun was setting, and its farewell glow streaming through the window fell upon his disfigured face and sightless eyes. He roused him-self, moving uneasily.

  “What’s up wi’ me?” he muttered. “I conna see—I conna—”

  Joan stepped forward.

  “Feyther,” she said.

  Then memory seemed to return to him. An angry light shot across his face. He flung out his hands and groaned: