“No.”

“You sent for me.”

“Did I?  Well, I dare say I did.  But gi’ me time.  Gi’ me time.  It’s noane so easy to look a man in the face, and tell him what I’m to tell thee.  But I can’t die with it on me.  It chokes me, ever since you brought me yonder stuff, and the women set a-talking.  I say—­old lad—­’twas I did thee yon little job at Cheetham’s.  But I knew no better.”

There was a dead silence.  And then Henry spoke.

“Who set you on?”

“Nay, that’s their business.”

“How did you do it?”

At this question—­will it be believed?—­the penitent’s eye twinkled with momentary vanity.  “I fastened a tea-cup to an iron rake, and filled the cup with powder; then I passed it in, and spilt the powder out of cup, and raked it in to the smithy slack, and so on, filling and raking in.  But I did thee one good turn, lad; I put powder as far from bellows as I could.  Eh, but I was a bad ’un to do the like to thee; and thou’s a good ’un to come here.  When I saw thee lie there, all scorched and shaking, I didn’t like my work; and now I hate it.  But I knew no better at the time.  And, you see, I’ve got it worse myself.  And cheap served too.”

“Oh, Mr. Little,” said Eliza Watney; “Try and forgive him.”

“My girl,” said Henry, solemnly, “I thought I never could forgive the man who did that cruel deed to me, and I had never injured any one.  But it is hard to know one’s own mind, let alone another man’s.  Now I look at him lying pale and battered there, it seems all wiped out.  I forgive you, my poor fellow, and I hope God will forgive you too.”

“Nay.  He is not so soft as thou.  This is how He forgives me.  But I knew no better.  Old gal, learn the young ’un to read, that’s coming just as I’m going; it is sore against a chap if he can’t read.  Right and wrong d—­n ’em, they are locked up in books, I think:  locked away from a chap like me.  I know a little better now.  But, eh, dear, dear, it is come too late.”  And now the poor wretch began to cry at a gleam of knowledge of right and wrong having come to him only just when he could no longer profit by it.

Henry left him at last, with the tears in his eyes.  He promised them all to come every day.

He called on Dr. Amboyne, and said, “You are always right, doctor.  Simmons was the man, he has owned it, and I forgave him.”

He then went and told Mr. Holdfast.  That gentleman was much pleased at the discovery, and said, “Ah, but who employed him?  That is what you must discover.”

“I will try,” said Henry.  “The poor fellow had half a mind to make a clean breast; but I didn’t like to worry him over it.”

Returning home he fell in with Grotait and Parkin.  They were talking earnestly at the door of a public-house, and the question they were discussing was whether or not Little’s affair should be revived.