‘Bessie, where are yer?’

She did not answer.  He made a sound of astonishment, and, finding no candle, took the lamp and mounted the stairs.  They were covered with traces of muddy snow, and at the top he stooped to examine a spot upon the boards.  It was blood; and his heart thumped in his breast.

‘Bessie, whatever is the matter?’

For by this time he had perceived her on the bed.  He put down the lamp and came to the bedside to look at her.

’I’ve ‘ad a fall,’ she said, faintly.  ’I tripped up over my skirt as I wor comin up to look at Arthur.  My head’s all bleedin.  Get me some water from over there.’

His countenance fell sadly.  But he got the water, exclaiming when he saw the wound.

He bathed it clumsily, then tied a bit of rag round it, and made her head easy with the pillow.  She did not speak, and he sat on beside her, looking at her pale face, and torn, as the silent minutes passed, between conflicting impulses.  He had just passed an hour listening to a good man’s plain narrative of a life spent for Christ, amid fever-swamps, and human beings more deadly still.  The Vicar’s friend was a missionary bishop, and a High Churchman; Isaac, as a staunch Dissenter by conviction and inheritance, thought ill both of bishops and Ritualists.  Nevertheless he had been touched; he had been fired.  Deep, though often perplexed instincts in his own heart had responded to the spiritual passion of the speaker.  The religious atmosphere had stolen about him, melting and subduing.

And the first effect of it had been to quicken suddenly his domestic conscience; to make him think painfully of Bessie and the children as he climbed the hill.

Was his wife going the way of his son?  And he, sitting day after day like a dumb dog, instead of striving with her!

He made up his mind hurriedly.

‘Bessie,’ he said, stooping to her and speaking in a strange voice, ‘Bessie, had yer been to Dawson’s?’

Dawson was the landlord of the ‘Spotted Deer.’

Bessie was long in answering.  At last she said, almost inaudibly, ‘Yes.’

She fully understood what he had meant by the question, and she wondered whether he would fall into one of his rages and beat her.

Instead his hand sought clumsily for hers.

’Bessie, yer shouldn’t; yer mustn’t do it no more; it’ll make a bad woman of yer.  I know as I’m not good to live with; I don’t make things pleasant to yer; but I’ve been thinkin; I’ll try if yo’ll try.’

Bessie burst into tears.  It seemed as though her life were breaking within her.  Never since their early married days had he spoken to her like this.  And she was in such piteous need of comfort; of some strong hand to help her out of the black pit in which she lay.  The wild impulse crossed her to sit up and tell him—­to throw it all on Timothy, to show him the cupboard and the box.  Should she tell him; brave it all now that he was like this?  Between them they might find a way—­make it good.