“Let ’em believe or disbelieve, who cares?” he thundered out.  “Not me—­not a curse for you or anybody, my awn blood or not my awn blood.  To harbour lies against me!  But women loves to believe bad most times.”

“Who said they believed it, Will?  Doan’t go mad, now ’tis awver and done.”

“They did believe it; I knaw, I seed it in theer faaces, come to think of it.  ’Tis the auld song.  I caan’t do no right.  Course I’ve got childer an’ ruined maids in every parish of the Moor!  God damn theer lying, poisonous tongues, the lot of ’em!  I’m sick of this rotten, lie-breeding hole, an’ of purty near every sawl in it but mother.  She never would think against me.  An’ me, so true to Phoebe as the honey-bee to his awn butt!  I’ll go—­I’ll get out of it—­so help me, I will—­to a clean land, ’mongst clean-thinking folk, wheer men deal fair and judge a chap by his works.  For a thought I’d wring the neck of the blasted child, by God I would!”

“He’ve done no wrong.”

“Nor me neither.  I had no more hand in his getting than he had himself.  Poor li’l brat; I’m sorry I spoke harsh of him.  He was give me—­he was give me—­an’ I wish to God he was mine.  Anyways he shaa’n’t come to no harm.  I’ll fight the lot of ’e for un, till he ’s auld enough to fight for hisself.”

Then Will burst out of Monks Barton and vanished.  He passed far from the confines of the farm, roamed on to the high Moor, and nothing further was seen of him until the following day.

Those most concerned assembled after his departure and heard the result of the interview.

“Solemn as a minister he swore,” explained Mr. Lyddon; “an’ then, a’most before his hands was off the Book, he burst out like a screeching, ravin’ hurricane.  I half felt the oath was vain then, an’ ’t was his real nature bubblin’ up like.”

They discussed the matter, all save Chris, who sat apart, silent and abstracted.  Presently she rose and left them, and faced her own trouble single-handed, as she had similarly confronted greater sorrows in the past.

She was fully determined to conceal her cherished secret still; yet not for the superficial reason that had occurred to any mind.  Vast mental alterations had transformed Chris Blanchard since the death of Clement.  Her family she scarcely considered now; no power of logic would have convinced her that she had wronged them or darkened their fame.  In the past, indeed, not the least motive of her flight had centred in the fear of Will; but now she feared nobody, and her own misfortune held no shadow of sin or shame for her, looking back upon it.  Those who would have denied themselves her society or friendship upon this knowledge it would have given her no pang to lose.  She could feel fiercely still, as she looked back to the birth of her son and traced the long course of her sufferings; and she yet experienced occasional thrills of satisfaction in her weaker moments, when