“Come and kiss me, Spruce!” she said, almost playfully—­“and don’t cry!  I’m not crying for myself, you see, and I don’t want anyone else to cry for me.  You’ll help to make the cripple-time pleasant, won’t you?—­yes, of course you will!—­and I can do the housekeeping just the same as ever—­nothing need alter that.  Only instead of running about all over the place, and getting in the way, I shall have to keep still,—­and you will always know where to find me.  That’s something of an advantage, Spruce!  And you’ll talk to me!—­oh yes!—­trust you for talking, you dear thing!—­and I shall know just as much about everybody as I want to,—­there Spruce!—­you will cry!- -so run away just now, and come back presently when you feel better--and braver!” Whereat Mrs. Spruce had kissed her on the cheek at her own request, and had caught her little hand and kissed that, and had then hurried out of the room before her rising sobs could break out, as they did, into rebellious blubbering.

“Which the Lord Almighty’s ways are ‘ard to bear!” she wailed.  “An’ that they’re past findin’ out, no sensible person will contradict, for why Miss Maryllia should be laid on ‘er back an’ me left to stan’ upright is a mystery Gospel itself can’t clear!  An’ if I could onny see Passon Walden, I’d ask ’im what it all means, for if anybody knows it he will,—­but he won’t see no one, an’ Dr. Forsyth says best not trouble ’im, so there I am all at sea without a life-belt, which Spruce bein’ ’arder of ‘earin’ than ever, don’t understand nohow nor never will.  But if there’s no way out of all this trouble, the Lord Himself ain’t as wise as I took ’im for, for didn’t He say to a man what ’ad crutches in the Testymen ‘Arise an’ walk’?—­an’ why shouldn’t He say ‘Arise an’ walk’ to Miss Maryllia?  I do ’ope I’m not sinful, but I’m fair mazed when I see the Lord ‘oldin’ off ’is hand as ‘twere, an’ not doin’ the right thing as ’e should do!”

Thus Mrs. Spruce argued, and it is to be feared that ’not doing the right thing’ was rather generally attributed to ‘the Lord,’ by the good folk of St. Rest at that immediate period.  Most of them were thirsting to try a little ‘right’ on their own account as concerned Oliver Leach.  For the whole story was now known,—­though had Maryllia not told it quite involuntarily in a state of semi-consciousness, she would never have betrayed the identity of her cowardly assailant.  But finding that she had, unknowingly to herself, related the incident as it happened, there was nothing to be done on her part, except to entreat that Leach might be allowed to go unpunished.  This, however, was a form of ultra-Christianity which did not in any way commend itself to the villagers of St. Rest.  They were on the watch for him day and night,—­scouts traversed the high road to Riversford from east to west, from north to south in the hope of meeting him driving along to the town as usual on his estate agency business, but not a sign of him had been seen since