at midnight for America.  Further pursuit was impossible.  He returned home, and late that same evening was found lying dead drunk on the road-side within a hundred yards of the local railway station.  He was brought home and put to bed, and next day was seized with a severe fit of epilepsy.  For weeks his life was in danger, and when at last he recovered strength of body, his mind remained in a state of moroseness that at times bordered on insanity.  He became a fierce hater of women, and the chief victim of his frenzy was his stepdaughter, Mary Whittaker.

She bore his harshness with a Griselda patience, but this seemed only to add provocation to his anger.  In her he saw the daughter of the woman who had trodden his pride in the dust, and he marked her out as the object of his vengeance.  Finding that bitter words and deeds of cruelty left her seemingly unmoved, his morose and wounded spirit devised other and darker plans of revenge.  At first he conceived the idea of driving her penniless from his doors, but, realising that the girl would find no difficulty in obtaining a place as servant on one of the neighbouring farms, he abandoned it as furnishing insufficient satisfaction for his tortured heart.  One day he heard how a farmer had some years before ignominiously sold by public auction the wife of whom he had grown tired, and Learoyd gloated over the story with malicious glee.  Here was a means of satisfying his vengeance to the full.  To his warped imagination it mattered little that Mary Whittaker was entirely innocent of her mother’s desertion of him, or that Anne Learoyd, far away in America, would probably never hear of her daughter’s shame.  Inasmuch as the guilty wife was out of his clutch, he was content with the vicarious sacrifice that he could demand from her daughter.

For some days he brooded over his cruel purpose, and it found ever more favour in his eyes.  Market day came and the time was ripe for action.  Roughly informing his stepdaughter that she must go with him to market, he left the house with her on foot, carrying a halter in his hand.  On the road he brutally informed her of his purpose.  A chill of horror seized the girl when she heard the news, but her tears and entreaties, so far from melting his heart, filled him with an unholy joy.  As they passed a farm-house on the road Mary screamed out for help, but Learoyd silenced her with a blow on the mouth, and then, leaving the high road, took the path through the fields in order to avoid company.  Arriving at the outskirts of the town, he slipped the halter over her head and dragged her through the by-streets to the market-place.

Such was Mary’s story as told to the weaver that evening in his cottage.  Tom Parfitt was a man of few words, but the tears that rolled down his cheek showed his sympathy.  “Poor lass, poor lass” was his frequent comment as he listened to the harrowing details and thought of the agony of the market-place; and when she had ended her tale his voice was broken with sobs.