to
their mothers--everything inanimate was full of hope and gladness.

For the first time for a mournful month the front door of
Haytersbank Farm was open; the warm spring air might enter, and
displace the sad dark gloom, if it could. There was a newly-lighted
fire in the unused grate; and Kester was in the kitchen, with his
clogs off his feet, so as not to dirty the spotless floor, stirring
here and there, and trying in his awkward way to make things look
home-like and cheerful. He had brought in some wild daffodils which
he had been to seek in the dawn, and he placed them in a jug on the
dresser. Dolly Reid, the woman who had come to help Sylvia during
her mother's illness a year ago, was attending to something in the
back-kitchen, making a noise among the milk-cans, and singing a
ballad to herself as she worked; yet every now and then she checked
herself in her singing, as if a sudden recollection came upon her
that this was neither the time nor the place for songs. Once or
twice she took up the funeral psalm which is sung by the bearers of
the body in that country--

Our God, our help in ages past.

But it was of no use: the pleasant April weather out of doors, and
perhaps the natural spring in the body, disposed her nature to
cheerfulness, and insensibly she returned to her old ditty.

Kester was turning over many things in his rude honest mind as he
stood there, giving his finishing touches every now and then to the
aspect of the house-place, in preparation for the return of the
widow and daughter of his old master.

It was a month and more since they had left home; more than a
fortnight since Kester, with three halfpence in his pocket, had set
out after his day's work to go to York--to walk all night long, and
to wish Daniel Robson his last farewell.

Daniel had tried to keep up and had brought out one or two familiar,
thread-bare, well-worn jokes, such as he had made Kester chuckle
over many a time and oft, when the two had been together afield or
in the shippen at the home which he should never more see. But no
'Old Grouse in the gunroom' could make Kester smile, or do anything
except groan in but a heart-broken sort of fashion, and presently
the talk had become more suitable to the occasion, Daniel being up
to the last the more composed of the two; for Kester, when turned
out of the condemned cell, fairly broke down into the heavy sobbing
he had never thought to sob again on earth. He had left Bell and