She was crying before she had ended this speech, and seeing her tears, the child began to cry too, stretching out its little arms to go back to its mother.  The hard stony look on her face melted away into the softest, tenderest love as she clasped the little one to her, and tried to soothe its frightened sobs.

A bright thought came into the old man’s mind.

He had been taking a complete dislike to her till her pretty way with her baby showed him that she had a heart of flesh within her.

‘Poor little one!’ said he, ’thy mother had need love thee, for she’s deprived thee of thy father’s love.  Thou’rt half-way to being an orphan; yet I cannot call thee one of the fatherless to whom God will be a father.  Thou’rt a desolate babe, thou may’st well cry; thine earthly parents have forsaken thee, and I know not if the Lord will take thee up.’

Sylvia looked up at him affrighted; holding her baby tighter to her, she exclaimed.

’Don’t speak so, sir! it’s cursing, sir!  I haven’t forsaken her!  Oh, sir! those are awful sayings.’

’Thee hast sworn never to forgive thy husband, nor to live with him again.  Dost thee know that by the law of the land, he may claim his child; and then thou wilt have to forsake it, or to be forsworn?  Poor little maiden!’ continued he, once more luring the baby to him with the temptation of the watch and chain.

Sylvia thought for a while before speaking.  Then she said,

’I cannot tell what ways to take.  Whiles I think my head is crazed.  It were a cruel turn he did me!’

‘It was.  I couldn’t have thought him guilty of such baseness.’

This acquiescence, which was perfectly honest on Jeremiah’s part, almost took Sylvia by surprise.  Why might she not hate one who had been both cruel and base in his treatment of her?  And yet she recoiled from the application of such hard terms by another to Philip, by a cool-judging and indifferent person, as she esteemed Jeremiah to be.  From some inscrutable turn in her thoughts, she began to defend him, or at least to palliate the harsh judgment which she herself had been the first to pronounce.

’He were so tender to mother; she were dearly fond on him; he niver spared aught he could do for her, else I would niver ha’ married him.’

’He was a good and kind-hearted lad from the time he was fifteen.  And I never found him out in any falsehood, no more did my brother.’

‘But it were all the same as a lie,’ said Sylvia, swiftly changing her ground, ’to leave me to think as Charley were dead, when he knowed all t’ time he were alive.’

’It was.  It was a self-seeking lie; putting thee to pain to get his own ends.  And the end of it has been that he is driven forth like Cain.’

‘I niver told him to go, sir.’

‘But thy words sent him forth, Sylvia.’

’I cannot unsay them, sir; and I believe as I should say them again.’