These thoughts passed very quickly through her overwrought brain, as she knelt in the passage; kneeling because she felt she could no longer stand, the passionate tears streaming down her face, her small hands pressing her temples.  Then she struggled to her feet and dried her eyes, steadying herself against the wall for a moment.  She had almost forgotten little Nellie whom she had left in the drawing-room.  She had told the child, when she went back to her, leaving Goddard alone in the dark, that the man was a poor starving tramp, but that she did not want Nellie to see him, because he looked so miserable.  She would give him something to eat and send him away, she said, and meanwhile Nellie should sit by the drawing-room fire and wait for her.  The child trusted her mother implicitly and was completely reassured.  Mrs. Goddard dried her eyes, and re-entered the room.  Nellie was curled up in a big chair with a book; she looked up quickly.

“Why, mamma,” she said, “you have been crying!”

“Have I, darling?  I daresay it was the sight of that poor man.  He was very wretched.”

“Is he gone?” asked the child.

It was unusually late and Nellie was beginning to be sleepy, so that she was more easily quieted than she could have been in ordinary circumstances.  It might have struck her as strange that a wandering tramp should know her mother’s Christian name, as still more inexplicable that her mother should have been willing to admit such a man at so late an hour.  She had been badly frightened, but trusting her mother as she did, her terror had quickly disappeared and had been quickly followed by sleepiness.

But Mrs. Goddard. did not sleep that night.  She felt as though she could never sleep again, and for many hours she lay thinking of the new element of fear which had so suddenly come into her life at the very time when she believed herself to be safe for many years to come.  She longed to know where her wretched husband was; whether he had found shelter for the night, whether he was still free or whether he had even then fallen into the hands of his pursuers.  She knew that she could not have concealed him in the house and that she had done all that lay in her power for him.  But she started at every sound, as the rain rattled against the shutters and the wind howled down the chimney.

Walter Goddard, however, was safe for the present and was even luxuriously lodged, considering his circumstances, for he was comfortably installed amongst the hay in the barn of the “Feathers” inn.  He had been in Billingsfield since early in the afternoon and had considered carefully the question of his quarters for the night.  He had observed from a distance the landlord of the said inn, and had boldly offered to do a “day’s work for a night’s lodging.”  He said he was “tramping” his way back from London to his home in Yorkshire; he knew enough of the sound of the rough Yorkshire dialect to pass for a native of that county amongst