Well, that was better than breakfast, no doubt, for the hungry girl, and when her uncle stormed up again, to know if she’d come to her senses and would go over and see Bassett, she said she’d never left her senses, and told him, very bravely, that there was a time coming when his Maker would reckon with him and her aunt also.

He gnashed what teeth he’d got left at her, and told her that he’d break her and make her howl for mercy afore she was many hours older.  And then he went down house and dared his wife, who was getting a bit skeared over it, to take the girl a crust.

“’Tis my will against hers,” he said, “and I’ve got the whip hand.  Another day without food will soon bring her to heel; and if it don’t, I’ll try what a touch of my leather belt will do for the young devil.”

Then he went to work, and the few folk he ferried that Sabbath day all said that Jimmy was getting no better than a bear with a sore head, for he hadn’t a word to throw at man, or woman, but mumbled in his beard to himself and scowled at the folk as if they were all his natural enemies.

And meantime the hours passed and Christie, though cruel distressed for want of food, did as Ted bade her, and packed her little box with her few treasures, and put on her Sunday clothes, and wondered with all her might however Edmund Masters would be so good as his word.

But she trusted him and doubted not that things would fall out as he said.  She knew that The Provider sailed for home that night, and guessed her lover meant taking her along with him.  Indeed, once out of ’Passage House,’ she didn’t intend to lose sight of him again.  She kept calm and watchful as the sun turned west and the day began to sink.  Not a sound had come up to her, but she’d heard her aunt shuffling about the passage once or twice; and once, the old woman, fearful of her silence, had looked in and found her rayed in her Sunday best.

She thought Christie had changed her mind, and was going to William Bassett.  So she locked her in again and ran down to tell Jimmy, who was below just going to have his tea.

But a good many hours passed before her husband heard the news after all, for, when his wife got below, he’d just heard the ferry bell calling him from t’other side the river and gone down to his boat and put across.

For when folk came to the little landing-stage at Greenway they rang the ferry bell, lifted up on the high post there, and that brought Fox across to ’em till the hour of dusk.  And if they called him after that, they had got to pay double.

Jimmy reckoned it was dusk enough by now to make the fare pay twice over, and he was well used to having arguments on that subject as the evenings began to draw in.  But this time he had a surprise—­the surprise of his life, in fact—­for coming alongside the Greenway steps and telling whoever ’twas to hurry up, a voice from above bade him to moor the boat, and come and lend a hand with a box.