again to contradict her;
indeed, she did not know if he had heard her, so unmoved did he look.

"Wouldst like to go to Upclose Farm?" asked she, sorrowfully.

"It's just blackberrying time," said Tom.

Will shook his head. She looked at him awhile, as if trying to read that
expression of despondency, and trace it back to its source.

"Will and Tom could go," said she; "I must stay here till I've found her,
thou knowest," continued she, dropping her voice.

He turned quickly round, and with the authority he at all times exercised
over Tom, bade him begone to bed.

When Tom had left the room, he prepared to speak.

CHAPTER II.

"Mother," then said Will, "why will you keep on thinking she's alive? If
she were but dead, we need never name her name again. We've never heard
nought on her since father wrote her that letter; we never knew whether
she got it or not. She'd left her place before then. Many a one dies
in--"

"Oh, my lad! dunnot speak so to me, or my heart will break outright,"
said his mother, with a sort of cry. Then she calmed herself, for she
yearned to persuade him to her own belief. "Thou never asked, and
thou'rt too like thy father for me to tell without asking--but it were
all to be near Lizzie's old place that I settled down on this side o'
Manchester; and the very day at after we came, I went to her old missus,
and asked to speak a word wi' her. I had a strong mind to cast it up to
her, that she should ha' sent my poor lass away, without telling on it to
us first; but she were in black, and looked so sad I could na' find in my
heart to threep it up. But I did ask her a bit about our Lizzie. The
master would have turned her away at a day's warning (he's gone to
t'other place; I hope he'll meet wi' more mercy there than he showed our
Lizzie--I do), and when the missus asked her should she write to us, she
says Lizzie shook her head; and when she speered at her again, the poor
lass went down on her knees, and begged her not, for she said it would
break my heart (as it has done, Will--God knows it has)," said the poor
mother, choking with her struggle to keep down her hard overmastering
grief, "and her father would curse her--Oh, God, teach me to be patient."
She could not speak for a few minutes--"and the lass threatened, and said
she'd go drown herself in the canal, if the missus wrote home--and so--

"Well! I'd got a trace of my child--the missus thought she'd gone to th'
work