“No, I’ll stay for a while.  I’ll look after her.  They won’t come in if I’m here.  Except his sister—­Mrs. Mullins—­she may come in, of course, if she wants.”

The inspector hesitated.

“I’m going now to meet Mr. Raeburn, miss.  I’ll tell him that you’re here.”

“He knows,” said Marcella, briefly.  “Now are you ready?”

He signed assent, and Marcella went back to the wife.

“Mrs. Hurd,” she said, kneeling on the ground beside her, “they’re going.”

The wife sprang up with a cry and ran into the kitchen, where Hurd was already on his feet between Jenkins and another policeman, who were to convey him to the gaol at Widrington.  But when she came face to face with her husband something—­perhaps the nervous appeal in his strained eyes—­checked her, and she controlled herself piteously.  She did not even attempt to kiss him.  With her eyes on the ground, she put her hand on his arm.  “They’ll let me come and see you, Jim?” she said, trembling.

“Yes; you can find out the rules,” he said shortly.  “Don’t let them children cry.  They want their breakfast to warm them.  There’s plenty of coal.  I brought a sack home from Jellaby’s last night myself.  Good-bye.”

“Now, march,” said the inspector, sternly, pushing the wife back.

Marcella put her arm round the shaking woman.  The door opened; and beyond the three figures as they passed out, her eye passed to the waiting crowd, then to the misty expanse of common and the dark woods behind, still wrapped in fog.

When Mrs. Hurd saw the rows of people waiting within a stone’s throw of the door she shrank back.  Perhaps it struck her, as it struck Marcella, that every face was the face of a foe.  Marcella ran to the door as the inspector stepped out, and locked it after him.  Mrs. Hurd, hiding herself behind a bit of baize curtain, watched the two policemen mount with Hurd into the fly that was waiting, and then followed it with her eyes along the bit of straight road, uttering sounds the while of low anguish, which wrung the heart in Marcella’s breast.  Looking back in after days it always seemed to her that for this poor soul the true parting, the true wrench between life and life, came at this moment.

She went up to her, her own tears running over.

“You must come and lie down,” she said, recovering herself as quickly as possible.  “You and the children are both starved, and you will want your strength if you are to help him.  I will see to things.”

She put the helpless woman on the wooden settle by the fireplace, rolling up her cloak to make a pillow.

“Now, Willie, you sit by your mother.  Daisy, where’s the cradle?  Put the baby down and come and help me make the fire.”