‘What was he like?—­how old?—­tell me.’

‘My lass, a’ve summut else to do wi’ my eyes than go peering into men’s faces i’ t’ dusk light.’

‘But yo’ must have had light for t’ judge about the watch.’

’Eh! how sharp we are!  A’d a candle close to my nose.  But a didn’t tak’ it up for to gaze int’ his face.  That wouldn’t be manners, to my thinking.’

Hester was silent.  Then Darley’s heart relented.

‘If yo’re so set upo’ knowing who t’ fellow was, a could, mebbe, put yo’ on his tracks.’

‘How?’ said Hester, eagerly.  ’I do want to know.  I want to know very much, and for a good reason.’

‘Well, then, a’ll tell yo’.  He’s a queer tyke, that one is.  A’ll be bound he were sore pressed for t’ brass; yet he out’s wi’ a good half-crown, all wrapped up i’ paper, and he axes me t’ make a hole in it.  Says I, “It’s marring good king’s coin, at after a’ve made a hole in’t, it’ll never pass current again.”  So he mumbles, and mumbles, but for a’ that it must needs be done; and he’s left it here, and is t’ call for ‘t to-morrow at e’en.’

‘Oh, William Darley!’ said Hester, clasping her hands tight together.  ’Find out who he is, where he is—­anything—­everything about him—­and I will so bless yo’.’

Darley looked at her sharply, but with some signs of sympathy on his grave face.  ‘My woman,’ he said ‘a could ha’ wished as you’d niver seen t’ watch.  It’s poor, thankless work thinking too much on one o’ God’s creatures.  But a’ll do thy bidding,’ he continued, in a lighter and different tone.  ’A’m a ’cute old badger when need be.  Come for thy watch in a couple o’ days, and a’ll tell yo’ all as a’ve learnt.’

So Hester went away, her heart beating with the promise of knowing something about Philip,—­how much, how little, in these first moments, she dared not say even to herself.  Some sailor newly landed from distant seas might have become possessed of Philip’s watch in far-off latitudes; in which case, Philip would be dead.  That might be.  She tried to think that this was the most probable way of accounting for the watch.  She could be certain as to the positive identity of the watch—­being in William Darley’s possession.  Again, it might be that Philip himself was near at hand—­was here in this very place—­starving, as too many were, for insufficiency of means to buy the high-priced food.  And then her heart burnt within her as she thought of the succulent, comfortable meals which Sylvia provided every day—­nay, three times a day—­for the household in the market-place, at the head of which Philip ought to have been; but his place knew him not.  For Sylvia had inherited her mother’s talent for housekeeping, and on her, in Alice’s decrepitude and Hester’s other occupations in the shop, devolved the cares of due provision for the somewhat heterogeneous family.

And Sylvia!  Hester groaned in heart over the remembrance of Sylvia’s words, ‘I can niver forgive him the wrong he did to me,’ that night when Hester had come, and clung to her, making the sad, shameful confession of her unreturned love.