When the large-mouthed woman seized Jan in her arms, and kissing him cried aloud, “Here he is at last!  My child, my long lost child!” the despair which sank into the poor boy’s heart made him speechless.  Was it possible that this woman was his mother?  His foster-mother’s words tolled like a knell in his ears,—­“The woman that brought our Jan hither.”  At the sound of Sal’s voice the hunchback appeared from behind the cart, and his wife dragged Jan towards him, crying, “Here’s our dear son! our pretty, clever little son.”

“I bean’t your son!” cried poor Jan, desperately.  “My mother’s dead.”  For a moment the Cheap Jack’s wife seemed staggered; but unluckily Jan added, “She died last month,” and it was evident that he knew nothing of his real history.

“Oh, them mill people, them false wretches!” screamed the woman.  “Have I been a paying ’em for my precious child, all this time, for ’em to teach him to deny his own mother!  The brutes!”

Jan’s face and eyes blazed with passion.  “How dare you abuse my good father and mother!” he cried.  “You be the wretch, and” —

But at this, and the same moment, the Cheap Jack seized Jan furiously by the throat, and Rufus sprang upon the hunchback.  The hunchback was in the greater danger, from which only his wife’s presence of mind saved him.  She shrieked to him to let Jan go, that he might call off the dog, which the vindictive little Cheap Jack was loath to do.  And when Jan had got Rufus off, and was holding him by the collar, the hunchback seized a hatchet with which he had been cutting stakes, and rushed upon the dog.  Jan put himself between them, crying incoherently, “Let him alone!  He’s not mine—­ he won’t hurt you—­I’ll send him home—­I’ll let un loose if ye don’t;” and Sal held back her husband, and said, “If you’ll behave civil, Jan, my dear, and as you should do to your poor mother, you may send the dog home.  And well for him too, for John’s a man that’s not very particular what he does to them that puts him out in a place like this where there’s no one to tell tales.  He’d chop him limb from limb, as soon as not.”

Jan shuddered.  There was no choice but to save Rufus.  He clung round the curly brown neck in one agonized embrace, and then steadied his voice for an authoritative, “Home, Rufus!” as he let him go.  Rufus hesitated, and looked dangerously at the hunchback, who lifted the hatchet.  Jan shouted angrily, “Home, Rufus!” and Rufus obeyed.  Twenty times, as his familiar figure, with the plumy tail curled sideways, lessened along the road, was Jan tempted to call him back to his destruction; but he did not.  Only when the brown speck was fairly lost to sight, his utter friendlessness overwhelmed him, and falling on his knees he besought the woman with tears to let him go,—­at least to tell Master Lake all about it.

The hunchback began to reply with angry oaths, but Sal made signs to him to be silent, and said, “It comes very hard to me, Jan, to be treated this way by my only son, but, if you’ll be a good boy, I’m willing to oblige you, and we’ll drive round by the mill to let you see your friends, though it’s out of the way too.”