aded shawl.

Tom stared, and his visitor went on--

"You'd 'a died for sure if I hadn't. Don't ye cast it up to me, Master
Tom. I've been punished enough. Punished! If I was to bare my arm now
I could show you weals that's more colours and brighter than your
neckankercher there. I've been served worse nor that, though, since. I
ain't a-goin' to put up with it no longer. Master Tom, do you know as
you've Been put upon, and by who?"

His senses were keenly on the alert. "Tell me the truth, my good
girl," said he, "and I'll forgive you all your share. More, I'll stick
by you through thick and thin."

She whimpered a little, affected by the kindness of his tone, but
tugging harder at her shawl, proceeded to further confessions.

"You was hocussed, Master Tom; and I can point out to you the man as
did it. You'd 'a been murdered amongst 'em if it hadn't been for me.
Who was it, d'ye think, as nussed of you, and cared for you, all
through, and laid out your clothes ready brushed and folded, and went
and got you a cab the day as you come back here? Master Tom, I've been
put upon too. Put upon and deceived, as never yet was born woman used
so bad; and it's my turn now! Look ye here, Master Tom. It's that
villain, Jim--Gentleman Jim, as we calls him--what's been at the
bottom of this here. And yet there's worse than Jim in it too. There's
others that set Jim on. O! to believe as a fine handsome chap like him
could turn out to be so black-hearted, and such a soft too. She'll
never think no more of him, for all his comely face, than the dirt
beneath her feet."

"_She_!" repeated Tom, intensely interested, and therefore
preternaturally calm. "What d'ye mean by _she_? Don't fret, that's a
good girl, and don't excite yourself. Tell your story your own way,
you know, but keep as quiet as you can. You're safe enough here."

"We'd been asked in church," replied Dorothea, somewhat
inconsequently. "Ah! more than once, we had. And I'd ha' been as true
to him, and was, as ever a needle to a stitch. Well, sir, when he
slights of me, and leaves of me, why it's natural as I should run up
and down the streets a-lookin' for him like wild. So one day, after
I'd done my work, and put things straight, for I never was one of your
sluttish ones, Master Tom--and your uncle, he's always been a kind
gentleman to me, and a haffable, like yourself, Master Tom--according,
I comes upon my Jim at the Sunflower, and I follows him unbeknown for
miles a