‘O no, not at you,’ she hastily answered, the colour vividly returning to her pale cheeks.

’This good-looking person is, I daresay, a sweetheart of yours; so I’ll just keep astern out of ear-shot.  My road lies past your dwelling.’

The girl appeared to understand me, and, reassured, walked on, Wyatt lopping sullenly along beside her.  I did not choose to have a fellow of his stamp, and in his present mood, walking behind me.

Nothing was said that I heard for about a mile and a half, when Wyatt, with a snarling ‘good-night’ to the girl, turned off by a path on the left, and was quickly out of sight.

‘I am not very far from home now, sir,’ said the young woman hesitatingly.  She thought, perhaps, that I might leave her, now Wyatt had disappeared.

‘Pray go on, then,’ I said; ’I will see you safe there, though somewhat pressed for time.’

We walked side by side, and after awhile she said in a low tone, and with still downcast eyes:  ’My mother lived servant in your family once, sir.’

‘The deuce!  Your name is Ransome, then, I suspect.’

‘Yes, sir—­Mary Ransome.’  A sad sigh accompanied these words.  I pitied the poor girl from my heart, but having nothing very consolatory to suggest, I held my peace.

‘There is mother!’ she cried in an almost joyful tone.  She pointed to a woman standing in the open doorway of a mean dwelling at no great distance, in apparently anxious expectation.  Mary Ransome hastened forwards, and whispered a few sentences to her mother, who fondly embraced her.

’I am very grateful to you, sir, for seeing Mary safely home.  You do not, I daresay, remember me?’

‘You are greatly changed, I perceive, and not by years alone.’

‘Ah, sir!’ Tears started to the eyes of both mother and daughter.  ‘Would you,’ added the woman, ’step in a moment.  Perhaps a few words from you might have effect.’  She looked, whilst thus speaking, at her weak, consumptive-looking husband, who was seated by the fireplace with a large green baize-covered Bible open before him on a round table.  There is no sermon so impressive as that which gleams from an apparently yawning and inevitable grave; and none, too, more quickly forgotten, if by any resource of art, and reinvigoration of nature, the tombward progress be arrested, and life pulsate joyously again.  I was about to make some remark upon the suicidal folly of persisting in a course which almost necessarily led to misery and ruin, when the but partially-closed doorway was darkened by the burly figure of Wyatt.

‘A very nice company, by jingo!’ growled the ruffian; ’you only want the doctor to be quite complete.  But hark ye, Ransome,’ he continued, addressing the sick man, who cowered beneath his scowling gaze like a beaten hound—­’mind and keep a still tongue in that calf’s head of yourn, or else prepare yourself to—­to take—­to take—­what follows.  You know me as well as I do you.  Good-night.’