In fact, he had that very morning done with troubling anybody.  When Mr. Carnegie pulled up ten minutes later at the door of a forlorn hovel which was the present shelter of the once decent widow, he had no need to dismount.  “Ride on, Bessie,” he said softly, and Bessie rode on.  Widow Burt came out to speak to the doctor, her lean face scorched to the color of a brick, her clothing ragged, her hair unkempt, her eyes wild as the eyes of a hunted animal.

“He’s gone, sir,” she said, pointing in-doors to where a long, motionless figure seated in a chair was covered with a ragged patchwork quilt.  The doctor nodded gravely, paused, asked if she were alone.

“Mrs. Wallop sat up with us last night—­she’s very good, is Mrs. Wallop—­but first thing this morning Bunny came along to fetch her to his wife, and she’d hardly got out o’ sight when poor Tom stretched hisself like a bairn that’s waked up and is going to drop off to sleep again, an’ with one great sigh was dead.  Miss Wort comes most mornings:  here she is.”

Yes, there was Miss Wort, plunging head foremost through the heather by way of making a short cut.  She saw at a glance what had happened, and taking both the poor mother’s hands in her own, she addressed the doctor with tears in her eyes and tremulous anger in her voice:  “I shall always say that it is a bad and cruel thing to send boys to prison, or anybody whose temptation is hunger.  How can we tell what we should do ourselves?  We are not wiser than the Bible, and we are taught to pray God lest we be poor and steal.  Tom would never have come to be what he was but for that dreadful month at Whitchester.  Instead of shutting up village-boys and hurting their health if they have done anything wrong, why can’t they be ordered to wear a fool’s cap for a week, going about their ordinary work?  Our eyes would be on them, and they would not have a chance of picking and stealing again; it would give us a little more trouble at first, but not in the long run, and save taxes for prisons.  People would say, ‘There goes a poor thief,’ and they would be sorry for him, and wonder why he did it; and we ought to look after our own things.  And then, if they turned out incorrigible, they might be shut up or sent out of the way of temptation.  Oh, if those who have the power were only a little more considerate, and would learn to put themselves in their place!”

Mr. Carnegie said that Miss Wort’s queer suggestion was capable of development, and there was too much sending of poor and young people to prison for light offences—­offences of ignorance often, for which a reprimand and compensation would be enough.  Bessie had never seen him more saddened.

Their next and last visit was to Littlemire.  Mr. Moxon was in his garden, working without his coat.  He came forward, putting the threadbare garment on, and begged Miss Fairfax to go up stairs and see his wife.  This was one of her good days, as she called the days when the aching weariness of her perpetual confinement was a degree abated, and she welcomed her visitor with a cry of plaintive joy, kissed her, gazed at her fondly through glittering tears.