‘Yo’ dunnot think they’ll be hard wi’ him when they hear all about it, done yo’?  Why, York Castle’s t’ place they send a’ t’ thieves and robbers to, not honest men like feyther.’

Hester put her hand on Sylvia’s shoulder with a soft, caressing gesture.

‘Philip will know,’ she said, using Philip’s name as a kind of spell—­it would have been so to her.  ‘Come away to Philip,’ said she again, urging Sylvia, by her looks and manner, to prepare for the little journey.  Sylvia moved away for this purpose, saying to herself,—­

‘It’s going to see feyther:  he will tell me all.’

Poor Mrs. Robson was collecting a few clothes for her husband with an eager, trembling hand, so trembling that article after article fell to the floor, and it was Hester who picked them up; and at last, after many vain attempts by the grief-shaken woman, it was Hester who tied the bundle, and arranged the cloak, and fastened down the hood; Sylvia standing by, not unobservant, though apparently absorbed in her own thoughts.

At length, all was arranged, and the key given over to Kester.  As they passed out into the storm, Sylvia said to Hester,—­

’Thou’s a real good wench.  Thou’s fitter to be about mother than me.  I’m but a cross-patch at best, an’ now it’s like as if I was no good to nobody.’

Sylvia began to cry, but Hester had no time to attend to her, even had she the inclination:  all her care was needed to help the hasty, tottering steps of the wife who was feebly speeding up the wet and slippery brow to her husband.  All Bell thought of was that ‘he’ was at the end of her toil.  She hardly understood when she was to see him; her weary heart and brain had only received one idea—­that each step she was now taking was leading her to him.  Tired and exhausted with her quick walk up hill, battling all the way with wind and rain, she could hardly have held up another minute when they reached the tax-cart in the lane, and Hester had almost to lift her on to the front seat by the driver.  She covered and wrapped up the poor old woman, and afterwards placed herself in the straw at the back of the cart, packed up close by the shivering, weeping Sylvia.  Neither of them spoke a word at first; but Hester’s tender conscience smote her for her silence before they had reached Monkshaven.  She wanted to say some kind word to Sylvia, and yet knew not how to begin.  Somehow, without knowing why, or reasoning upon it, she hit upon Philip’s message as the best comfort in her power to give.  She had delivered it before, but it had been apparently little heeded.

‘Philip bade me say it was business as kept him from fetchin’ yo’ hissel’—­business wi’ the lawyer, about—­about yo’r father.’

‘What do they say?’ said Sylvia, suddenly, lifting her bowed head, as though she would read her companion’s face in the dim light.