‘Very well,’ replied Mr Openshaw, surlily.  ’I can’t clear Norah.  She won’t clear herself, as I believe she might if she would.  Only I wash my hands of it; for I am sure the woman herself is honest, and she’s lived a long time with my wife, and I don’t like her to come to shame.’

’But she will then be forced to clear herself.  That, at any rate, will be a good thing.’

’Very well, very well!  I am heart-sick of the whole business.  Come, Alice, come up to the babies; they’ll be in a sore way.  I tell you, uncle,’ he said, turning round once more to Mr Chadwick, suddenly and sharply, after his eye had fallen on Alice’s wan, tearful, anxious face, ’I’ll have no sending for the police, after all.  I’ll buy my aunt twice as handsome a brooch this very day; but I’ll not have Norah suspected, and my missus plagued.  There’s for you!’

He and his wife left the room.  Mr Chadwick quietly waited till he was out of hearing, and then said to his wife, ’For all Tom’s heroics, I’m just quietly going for a detective, wench.  Thou need’st know nought about it.’

He went to the police-station and made a statement of the case.  He was gratified by the impression which the evidence against Norah seemed to make.  The men all agreed in his opinion, and steps were to be immediately taken to find out where she was.  Most probably, as they suggested, she had gone at once to the man, who, to all appearance, was her lover.  When Mr Chadwick asked how they would find her out, they smiled, shook their heads, and spoke of mysterious but infallible ways and means.  He returned to his nephew’s house with a very comfortable opinion of his own sagacity.  He was met by his wife with a penitent face.

’Oh, master, I’ve found my brooch!  It was just sticking by its pin in the flounce of my brown silk, that I wore yesterday.  I took it off in a hurry, and it must have caught in it; and I hung up my gown in the closet.  Just now, when I was going to fold it up, there was the brooch!  I am very vexed, but I never dreamt but what it was lost!’

Her husband, muttering something very like ’Confound thee and thy brooch too!  I wish I’d never given it thee,’ snatched up his hat, and rushed back to the station, hoping to be in time to stop the police from searching for Norah.  But a detective was already gone off on the errand.

Where was Norah?  Half mad with the strain of the fearful secret, she had hardly slept through the night for thinking what must be done.  Upon this terrible state of mind had come Ailsie’s questions, showing that she had seen the Man, as the unconscious child called her father.  Lastly came the suspicion of her honesty.  She was little less than crazy as she ran upstairs and dashed on her bonnet and shawl; leaving all else, even her purse, behind her.  In that house she would not stay.  That was all she knew or was clear about.  She would not even see the children again, for fear it should weaken