“You are Jack’s mother,” said a sweet, soft voice in accents of confident yet timid appeal that went at once to her heart.  “He has told me so much of you—­he has said that you would be a mother to me.  And I have so longed for a mother all my life.  I never had one.  Mine own mother died almost ere I saw the light.  He said you would love me; and I have loved you long.  Yet it is not of myself I must talk now, but of yon poor lad whom you know well.  We have brought Paul Stukely back to you.  Oh, he has been sorely handled by those cruel robbers—­the band of Black Notley!  He has been like a dead man these last miles of the road.  But Jack says he is not dead, and that your kindly skill will make him live again.”

And before Mistress Devenish was well aware whether she were not in a dream herself, her husband had lifted into the house the apparently inanimate form of Paul Stukely, and had laid him down upon the oak settle near to the hospitable hearth.

Jack had gone to the stable with the horses; but one of the serving men having been aroused and having come to his assistance, he was able quickly to join the party beside the fire, and coming forward with a glad and confident step, he took the hand of the fairy-like girl in his own, and placed it within that of his mother.

“Father, mother,” he said, “I have brought you home my bride that is to be.  Listen, and I will tell you a strange story, and I know you will not then withhold your love from one who has known little of it, and who has led a strange, hard life amid all that is bad and cruel, and is yet all that you can wish to find in woman—­all that is true and pure and lovely.”

And then Jack, with the sort of rude eloquence sometimes found in his class, told of his wooing of the robber’s daughter; told of her hatred and loathing of the scenes she was forced to witness, of the life she was forced to lead; told of her fierce father’s fierce love gradually waning and turning to anger as he discovered that she was not pliable material in his hands, to be bent to his stern will; told how he had of late wished to wed her to the terrible Simon Dowsett, and how she had felt at last that flight alone with her own lover could save her from that fate.

Then he told of Paul’s capture upon the very night for which the flight had been planned; told how gallantly he had defied the cruelty of the robber band, and how his Eva had effected his liberation and had brought him with her to the trysting place.  They had planned before the details of the flight, and it would be death to her to be sent back; but after her liberation of the captive, the thought of facing that lawless band again was not to be thought of.

And the farmer, who had listened to the tale with kindling eyes and many a smothered ejaculation of anger and pity, suddenly put his strong arms about the slight figure of the girl, and gave her a hearty kiss on both cheeks.