“Poor Cupid!” she murmured—­“You are like me—­you are unregenerate!—­you have never been baptised!—­your soul has not been washed clean!—­and all your sins are on your head!  Yes, Cupid!—­we are very much alike!—­for I don’t suppose you know your own father and mother any more than I know mine!  And yet God made you—­and He has taken care of you—­so far!”

She stroked the dove’s satiny plumage gently—­and then drew back a little into shadow as she saw Robin Clifford step out from the porch into the garden and hurriedly interrupt the advance of a woman who just then pushed open the outer gate—­a slatternly-looking creature with dark dishevelled hair and a face which might have been handsome, but for its unmistakable impress of drink and dissipation.

“Eh, Mr. Clifford—­it’s you, is it?” she exclaimed, in shrill tones.  “An’ Farmer Jocelyn’s dead!—­who’d a’ thought it!  But I’d ’ave ’ad a bone to pick with ‘im this mornin’, if he’d been livin’—­that I would!—­givin’ sack to Ned Landon without a warning to me!”

Innocent leaned forward, listening eagerly, with an uncomfortably beating heart.  Through all the miserable, slow, and aching hours that had elapsed since Hugo Jocelyn’s death, there had been a secret anxiety in her mind concerning Ned Landon and the various possibilities involved in his return to the farm, when he should learn that his employer was no more, and that Robin was sole master.

“I’ve come up to speak with ye,” continued the woman,—­“It’s pretty ’ard on me to be left in the ditch, with a man tumbling ye off his horse an’ ridin’ away where ye can’t get at ’im!” She laughed harshly.  “Ned’s gone to ’Merriker!”

“Gone to America!”—­Robin’s voice rang out in sharp accents of surprise—­“Ned Landon?  Why, when did you hear that?”

“Just now—­his own letter came with the carrier’s cart—­he left the town last night and takes ship from Southampton to-day.  And why?  Because Farmer Jocelyn gave him five hundred pounds to do it!  So there’s some real news for ye!”

“Five hundred pounds!” echoed Clifford—­“My Uncle Hugo gave him five hundred pounds!”

“Ay, ye may stare!”—­and the woman laughed again—­“And the devil has taken it all,—­except a five-pun’ note which he sends to me to ‘keep me goin’,’ he says.  Like his cheek!  I’m not his wife, that’s true!—­but I’m as much as any wife—­an’ there’s the kid—­”

Robin glanced round apprehensively at the open window.

“Hush!” he said—­“don’t talk so loud—­”

“The dead can’t hear,” she said, scornfully—­“an’ Ned says in his letter that he’s been sent off all on account of you an’ your light o’ love—­Innocent, she’s called—­a precious ‘innocent’ she is!—­an’ that the old man has paid ‘im to go away an’ ’old his tongue!  So it’s all your fault, after all, that I’m left with the kid to rub along anyhow;—­he might ave married me in a while, if he’d stayed.  I’m only Jenny o’ Mill-Dykes now—­just as I’ve always been—­the toss an’ catch of every man!—­but I ’ad a grip on Ned with the kid, an’ he’d a’ done me right in the end if you an’ your precious ‘innocent’ ’adn’t been in the way—­”