“Good morning, George, my dear!” he cried, cheerfully; “you’ve seen my missus before, eh, George?” George was just about to say no, when he remembered that he had seen the woman, and when and where.

“Dreadful night that was, Mr. Sannel!” said the Cheap Jack’s wife, with a smile on her large mouth.  George assented, and by the hospitable invitation of the newly married couple he followed them into the dwelling part of the house, trying as he did so to decide upon a plan for his future conduct.

Here at last was a woman who could probably tell all that he wanted to know about the mystery on which he had hoped to trade, and—­the Cheap Jack had married her.  If any thing could be got out of the knowledge of Jan’s history, the Cheap Jack, and not George, would get it now.  The hasty resolution to which George came was to try to share what he could not keep entirely to himself.  He flattered himself he could be very civil, and—­he had got the letter.

It proved useful.  George was resolved not to show it until he had got at something of what the large-mouthed woman had to tell; and, as she wanted to see the letter, she made a virtue of necessity, and seemed anxious to help the miller’s man to the utmost of her power.

The history of her connection with Jan’s babyhood was soon told, and she told it truthfully.

Five years before her marriage to the Cheap Jack, she was a chambermaid in a small hotel in London, and “under notice to leave.”  Why—­she did not deem it necessary to tell George.  In this hotel Jan was born, and Jan’s mother died.  She was a foreigner, it was supposed, and her husband also, for they talked a foreign language to each other.  He was not with her when she first came, but he joined her afterwards, and was with her at her death.  So far the Cheap Jack’s wife spoke upon hearsay.  Though employed at the hotel, which was very full, she was not sleeping in the house; she was not on good terms with the landlady, nor even with the other servants, and her first real connection with the matter was when the gentleman, overhearing some “words” between her and the landlady at the bar, abruptly asked her if she were in want of employment.  He employed her,—­to take the child to the very town where she was now living as the Cheap Jack’s wife.  He did not come with her, as he had to attend his wife’s funeral.  It was understood at the hotel that he was going to take the body abroad for interment.  So the porter had said.  The person to whom she was directed to bring the child was a respectable old woman, living in the outskirts of the town, whose business was sick-nursing.  She seemed, however, to be comfortably off, and had not been out for some time.  She had been nurse to the gentleman in his childhood, so she once told the Cheap Jack’s wife with tears.  But she was always shedding tears, either over the baby, or as she sat over her big Bible, “for ever having to wipe her spectacles, and tears running over her