“Pure religion, and undefiled before God and the Father is this:  to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”

She saw exactly what she would do.  There was the child, motherless, and worse than fatherless.  She would take him and bring him up unspotted from the world.  It was clearly a leading for her.  She had not been permitted to save the girl, but she might take and protect the boy.  She remembered even the commonsense of Mrs Hankworth.  “It’s soonest forgotten about if it’s a boy.”  She was not so much an old maid as a woman shut up from issue, and she had no fear of a child.  And in the midst of her bewilderment about the girl, about death and the hereafter, she could see an earthly duty clearly, and pure religion for herself.  She began to sing: 

“Who points the clouds their course,
  Whom winds and storms obey,
He shall direct thy wandering feet,
  He shall point out thy way.”

She opened a drawer which held what was left of her father’s clothes without any feeling of incongruity.  There were four shirts of checked oxford shirting, two pairs of long stockings, a corduroy jacket, and his best suit of black serge bound with braid round the coat.  There was a revolver, too, a clasp knife, a unused church-warden, an old wide-awake hat.  To-morrow she would write to the Union, and offer to bring up the child when he was weaned.

CHAPTER XX

It was a cool evening in early summer, full of the leisurely peace of the country.  The women were out of doors after much perspiring work within.  It was too early for the shadows, yet a sensible relief to the day’s ardour, which one was disposed to linger and enjoy, was evident in the tranquil atmosphere, and on the relaxed faces of those who lingered about the doors of the cottages, or turned the bleaching clothes on the hedges.  Mrs Hankworth, in a fashionable bonnet and dark green dress, which proclaimed a ceremonial visit, was driving beside her husband in a light yellow trap, in the unusual direction of Anne Hilton’s cottage.  Her husband, with his eyes on the road, suddenly pulled up the horse.

“Now, where did you two come from?” he ejaculated, jumping from the trap and examining the backs of two enormous sows, who were munching and rooting in foreign ground with great satisfaction.  At the sight of their enemy, a man, they began that lumbering but nimble trot, by which their tribe elude and disregard anything disagreeable.

“You better get up again,” said Mrs Hankworth.  “We’ll keep up to them and perhaps turn ’em in somewhere.  Miss Hilton’s the nearest.”

“I don’t recognise ’em,” said the farmer, springing up with agility and driving the horse carefully after the sows.  “Some one must have bought them yesterday.  We can call at one or two places on the way back and inquire.  There’s William Crowther,” he added, standing up in the trap—­“William!” he shouted, “do you see them sows?  Stop ’em at Anne Hilton’s sty.  I don’t know whose they are.”