up at him affrighted; holding her baby tighter to her,
she exclaimed.

'Don't speak so, sir! it's cursing, sir! I haven't forsaken her! Oh,
sir! those are awful sayings.'

'Thee hast sworn never to forgive thy husband, nor to live with him
again. Dost thee know that by the law of the land, he may claim his
child; and then thou wilt have to forsake it, or to be forsworn?
Poor little maiden!' continued he, once more luring the baby to him
with the temptation of the watch and chain.

Sylvia thought for a while before speaking. Then she said,

'I cannot tell what ways to take. Whiles I think my head is crazed.
It were a cruel turn he did me!'

'It was. I couldn't have thought him guilty of such baseness.'

This acquiescence, which was perfectly honest on Jeremiah's part,
almost took Sylvia by surprise. Why might she not hate one who had
been both cruel and base in his treatment of her? And yet she
recoiled from the application of such hard terms by another to
Philip, by a cool-judging and indifferent person, as she esteemed
Jeremiah to be. From some inscrutable turn in her thoughts, she
began to defend him, or at least to palliate the harsh judgment
which she herself had been the first to pronounce.

'He were so tender to mother; she were dearly fond on him; he niver
spared aught he could do for her, else I would niver ha' married
him.'

'He was a good and kind-hearted lad from the time he was fifteen.
And I never found him out in any falsehood, no more did my brother.'

'But it were all the same as a lie,' said Sylvia, swiftly changing
her ground, 'to leave me to think as Charley were dead, when he
knowed all t' time he were alive.'

'It was. It was a self-seeking lie; putting thee to pain to get his
own ends. And the end of it has been that he is driven forth like
Cain.'

'I niver told him to go, sir.'

'But thy words sent him forth, Sylvia.'

'I cannot unsay them, sir; and I believe as I should say them
again.'

But she said this as one who rather hopes for a contradiction.

All Jeremiah replied, however, was, 'Poor wee child!' in a pitiful
tone, addressed to the baby.

Sylvia's eyes filled with tears.

'Oh, sir, I'll do anything as iver yo' can tell me for her. That's
what I came for t' ask yo'. I know I mun not stay theere, and Philip
gone away; and I dunnot know what to do: and I'll do aught, only I
must keep her wi' me. Whativer can I do, sir?'

Jeremiah thought it over for a minute or two.