There was no doubt about it, she must go, and go quickly, or Aunt Martha would be worrying.  She glanced across at the cottage, and there sure enough was Mrs. Perry standing waving her hand to call her in.

Huldah sprang to her feet at once.  “Run on, Dick, and tell her I’m coming.  Run home, that’s a good dog!”

Dick started, hesitated, but at a sign from his mistress ran on again.  Huldah collected her work and rolled it all up in her work-apron,—­one with big pockets, which Miss Rose had made for her,—­but before she was ready a sharp bark from Dick made her wheel round quickly.  A strange, shabbily dressed woman was standing talking to Mrs. Perry.  She had come so silently, so unexpectedly that Huldah had quite a shock, it seemed almost as though she had sprung up out of the ground.

“Only someone begging, I suppose,” she said to herself, but there was a vague feeling of trouble at her heart that she could not account for.  The new-comer looked harmless enough, a poor, shabbily dressed beggar-woman, thin, stooping, feeble-looking.

When Mrs. Perry raised her head and looked up over the field again, Huldah saw that her face was white and frightened, and in sudden alarm she took to her heels, and ran as fast as she could to the gate.

At the click of the latch the new-comer turned and looked across the road, and as she looked Huldah felt her head reel, and her heart almost stop beating, for the tramp was Aunt Emma!  Aunt Emma, come to cross her path once more.  Aunt Emma, shabbier and dirtier than ever, and with a pinched, starved look, which showed that things had not been going well with her.

When she caught sight of Huldah, her face lightened a little, and she hurried across the road to meet her.

“I’ve come to know if you can help me,” she began, in the same old fretful, whining voice.  “I know you don’t want to see me again, nobody does, but I’m starving.  I’ve been starving mostly ever since Tom was took away—­”

“Took away,” gasped Huldah faintly.  “Where?”

“He’s got three years.  Didn’t you know?  And I’m left to keep myself, and I can’t do it.  I’ll never live till he comes out, I know.  I’ve sold the van and everything.  I couldn’t go round with it by meself, but the man that had it off me cheated me something crool.  When Tom knows he’ll—­he’ll—­oh he’ll be mad with me—­”

“And Charlie?” asked Huldah, anxiously.

“Charlie!  Oh, he’s dead.  He dropped down in the road one day.  ’Twas lucky I’d sold him, wasn’t it?  He died only two days after.”

Tears sprang to Huldah’s eyes.  “Oh, Charlie, poor dear old Charlie!” she cried, “and—­and I never said good-bye to him, or anything!”

“He’s best off,” said Emma Smith, coldly.  “I wouldn’t have been sorry if I’d dropped down dead, too.”

Huldah gasped.

“I can’t get anything to do.  I’ve tried to sell laces and buttons, and cotton, but nobody don’t seem to want any,—­leastways not of me,” and neither of her listeners wondered, when they looked at her, so dirty, so untidy, so forbidding in appearance.