The tailor laughed loud, and then stopped himself with a suddenness quite startling.  The jest sounded awful on his lips.  “You say the back end’s the bare end,” he said, coming up to where Ralph sat in pain and amazement; “mine’s all bare end.  It’s nothing but ‘bare end’ for some of us.  Yesterday morning was wet and cold—­you know how cold it was.  Well, Rotha had hardly gone out when a tap came to the door, and what do you think it was?  A woman, a woman thin and blear-eyed.  Some one must have counted her face bonnie once.  She was scarce older than my own lass, but she’d a poor weak barn at her breast and a wee lad that trudged at her side.  She was wet and cold, and asked for rest and shelter for herself and the children-rest and shelter,” repeated the tailor in a lower tone, as though muttering to himself,—­“rest and shelter, and from me.”

“Well?” inquired Ralph, not noticing Sim’s self-reference.

“Well?” echoed Sim, as though Ralph should have divined the sequel.

“Had the poor creature been turned out of her home?”

“That and worse,” said the little tailor, his frame quivering with emotion.  “Do you know the king’s come by his own again?” Sim was speaking in an accent of the bitterest mockery.

“Worse luck,” said Ralph; “but what of that?”

“Why,” said Sim, almost screaming, “that every man in the land who fought for the Commonwealth eight years ago is like to be shot as a traitor.  Didn’t you know that, my lad?” And the little man put his hands with a feverish clutch on Ralph’s shoulders, and looked into his face.

For an instant there was a tremor on the young dalesman’s features, but it lasted only long enough for Sim to recognize it, and then the old firmness returned.

“But what of the poor woman and her barns?” Ralph said, quietly.

“Her husband, an old Roundhead, had fled from a warrant for his arrest.  She had been cast homeless into the road, she and all her household; her aged mother had died of exposure the first bitter night, and now for two long weeks she had walked on and on—­on and on—­her children with her—­on and on—­living Heaven knows how!”

A light now seemed to Ralph to be cast on the great change in his friend; but was it indeed fear for his (Ralph’s) well-being that had goaded poor Sim to a despair so near allied to madness?

“What about Wilson?” he asked, after a pause.

The tailor started at the name.

“I don’t know—­I don’t know at all,” he answered, as though eager to assert the truth of a statement never called into dispute.

“Does he intend to come back to Fornside to-night, Sim?”

“So he said.”

“What, think you, is his work at Gaskarth?”

“I don’t know—­I know nothing—­at least—­no, nothing.”

Ralph was sure now.  Sim was too eager to disclaim all knowledge of his lodger’s doings.  He would not recognize the connection between the former and present subjects of conversation.