“I’m sweer to say it,” he announced to Tommy and David, “but it has to be said.  We canna keep her.”

Evidently something had happened, and Tommy rose to go to Grizel without even asking what it was.  “Wait,” David said, wrinkling his eyebrows, “till Corp tells us what he means by that.  I knew it might come, Corp.  Go on.”

“If it hadna been for the bairn,” said Corp, “we would hae tholed wi’ her, however queer she was; but wi’ the bairn I tell you it’s no mous.  You’ll hae to tak’ her awa’.”

“Whatever she has been to others,” Tommy said, “she is always an angel with the child.  His own mother could not be fonder of him.”

“That’s it,” Corp replied emphatically.  “She’s no the mother o’ him, but there’s whiles when she thinks she is.  We kept it frae you as long as we could.”

“As long as she is so good to him——­” David began.

“But at thae times she’s not,” said Corp.  “She begins to shiver most terrible, as if she saw fearsome things in her mind, and syne we see her looking at him like as if she wanted to do him a mischief.  She says he’s her brat; she thinks he’s hers, and that he hasna been well come by.”

Tommy’s hands rose in agony, and then he covered his face with them.

“Go on, Corp,” David said hoarsely; “we must have it all.”

“Sometimes,” Corp went on painfully, “she canna help being fond o’ him, though she thinks she shouldna hae had him.  I’ve heard her saying, ‘My brat!’ and syne birsing him closer to her, as though her shame just made him mair to her.  Women are so queer about thae things.  I’ve seen her sitting by his cradle, moaning to hersel’, ’I did so want to be good!  It would be sweet to be good! and never stopping rocking the cradle, and a’ the time the tears were rolling down.”

Tommy cried, “If there is any more to tell, Corp, be quick.”

“There’s what I come here to tell you.  It was no langer syne than jimply an hour.  We thocht the bairn was playing at the gavle-end, and that Grizel was up the stair.  But they werena, and I gaed straight to Double Dykes.  She wasna there, but the bairn was, lying greetin’ on the floor.  We found her in the Den, sitting by the burn-side, and she said we should never see him again, for she had drowned him.  We’re sweer, but you’ll need to tak’ her awa’.”

“We shall take her away,” David said, and when he and Tommy were left together he asked:  “Do you see what it means?”

“It means that the horrors of her early days have come back to her, and that she is confusing her mother with herself.”

David’s hands were clenched.  “That is not what I am thinking of.  We have to take her away; they have done far more than we had any right to ask of them.  Sandys, where are we to take her to?”

“Do even you grow tired of her?” Tommy cried.

David said between his teeth:  “We hope there will soon be a child in this house, also.  God forgive me, but I cannot bring her back here.”