“I couldn’t be supposed to know better than her own father,” answered Mr. Whitelaw, in an injured tone; “he had a right to know best.  However, it’s no use arguing about it now.  He had such a power over me that I couldn’t go against him; so I gave in, and Mrs. Holbrook came to Wyncomb.  She was to be treated kindly and made comfortable, her father said; that was agreed between us; and she has been treated kindly and made comfortable.  I had to trust some one to wait upon her, and when Mr. Nowell saw the two girls he chose Sarah Batts.  ‘That girl will do anything for money,’ he said; ’she’s stupid, but she’s wise enough to know her own interest, and she’ll hold her tongue.’  So I trusted Sarah Batts, and I had to pay her pretty stiffly to keep the secret; but she was a rare one to do the work, and she went about it as quiet as a mouse.  Not even mother Tadman ever suspected her.”

“It was a wicked piece of business—­wicked from first to last,” said Ellen.  “I can’t bear to hear about it.”

And then, remembering that the sinner was so near his end, and that this voluntary confession of his was in some manner a sign of repentance, she felt some compunction, and spoke to him in a softer tone.

“Still I’m grateful to you for telling me the truth at last, Stephen,” she said; “and, thank God, there’s no harm done that need last for ever.  Thank God that dear young lady did not lose her life, shut up a prisoner in that miserable room, as she might have done.”

“She had her victuals regular,” observed Mr. Whitelaw, “and the best.”

“Eating and drinking won’t keep any one alive, if their heart’s breaking,” said Ellen; “but, thank heaven, her sufferings have come to an end now, and I trust God will forgive your share in them, Stephen.”

And then, sitting by his bedside through the long hours of that night, she tried in very simple words to awaken him to a sense of his condition.  It was not an easy business to let any glimmer of spiritual light in upon the darkness of that sordid mind.  There did arise perhaps in this last extremity some dim sense of remorse in the breast of Mr. Whitelaw, some vague consciousness that in that one act of his life, and in the whole tenor of his life, he had not exactly shaped his conduct according to that model which the parson had held up for his imitation in certain rather prosy sermons, indifferently heard, on the rare occasions of his attendance at the parish church.  But whatever terrors the world to come might hold for him seemed very faint and shapeless, compared with the things from which he was to be taken.  He thought of his untimely death as a hardship, an injustice almost.  When his wife entreated him to see the vicar of Crosber before he died, he refused at first, asking what good the vicar’s talk could do him.

“If he could keep me alive as long as till next July, to see how those turnips answer with the new dressing, I’d see him fast enough,” he said peevishly; “but he can’t; and I don’t want to hear his preaching.”