nken as he sat
dangling his spindle legs from the shaft of the carrier's cart; his
absence of mind was for a time more marked, and excused with less
buoyancy and inventiveness than usual. But otherwise all went on as
before. John Backhouse took no step, and for nine months nothing was
heard of his daughter.

At last one cheerless March afternoon, Jim, coming back first from the
Wednesday round with the cart, entered the farm kitchen, while John
Backhouse was still wrangling at one of the other farmhouses of the
hamlet about some disputed payment. The old man came in cold and weary,
and the sight of the half-tended kitchen and neglected fire--they paid a
neighbour to do the housework, as far as the care of her own seven
children would let her--suddenly revived in his slippery mind the memory
of his niece, who, with all her faults, had had the makings of a
housewife, and for whom, in spite of her flouts and jeers, he had always
cherished a secret admiration. As he came in he noticed that the door to
the left hand, leading into what Westmoreland folk call the 'house' or
sitting-room of the farm, was open. The room had hardly been used since
Mary's flight, and the few pieces of black oak and shining mahogany
which adorned it had long ago fallen from their pristine polish. The
geraniums and fuchsias with which she had filled the window all the
summer before had died into dry blackened stalks; and the dust lay heavy
on the room, in spite of the well-meant but wholly ineffective efforts
of the charwoman next door. The two old men had avoided the place for
months past by common consent, and the door into it was hardly ever
opened.

Now, however, it stood ajar, and old Jim going up to shut it, and
looking in, was struck dumb with astonishment. For there on a wooden
rocking-chair, which had been her mother's favourite seat, sat Mary
Backhouse, her feet on the curved brass fender, her eyes staring into
the parlour grate. Her clothes, her face, her attitude of cowering chill
and mortal fatigue, produced an impression which struck through the old
man's dull senses, and made him tremble so that his hand dropped from
the handle of the door. The slight sound roused Mary, and she turned
towards him. She said nothing for a few seconds, her hollow black eyes
fixed upon him; then with a ghastly smile, and a voice so hoarse as to
be scarcely audible--

'Weel, aa've coom back. Ye'd maybe not expect me?'

There was a sound behind on the