it? Wouldn't she have been anxious if she'd a'
known I'd been out?"

"Don't know as I should," she said. "That gentleman had better get
dried, and have his supper."

"I've got a bit of business first, deary. Where's the girl?"

"In the other kitchen."

"Call her.--Lord! listen to that."

A crash of thunder shook the house, heard loud above the rain, which
beat furiously against the windows. Madge immediately returned with the
servant girl, a modest, quiet-looking creature, evidently in terror at
the storm.

"Get out that paper, Dickson, and we'll get it signed."

The lawyer produced the will, and Madge and the servant girl were made
to witness it. Dickson, having dried the signatures, took charge of it
again; and then Hawker turned round fiercely to Madge.

"That's my new will," he said; "my new will, old woman. Oh, you cat!
I've found you out."

Madge saw a storm was coming, worse than the one which raged and
rattled outside, and she braced her nerves to meet it.

"What have you found out, old man?" she said quietly.

"I've found out that you and that young scoundrel have been robbing and
cheating me in a way that would bring me to the workhouse in another
year. I have found out that he has forged my name for nearly a thousand
pounds, and that you've helped him. I find that you yourself have
robbed me of hundreds of pounds, and that I have been blinded, and
cozened, and hoodwinked by two that I kept from the workhouse, and
treated as well as I treated myself. That's what I have found out,
gipsy."

"Well?" was all Madge said, standing before him with her arms folded.

"So I say," said Hawker; "it is very well. The mother to the streets,
and the boy to the gallows."

"You wouldn't prosecute him, William; your own son?"

"No, I shan't," he replied;--"but the Bank will."

"And couldn't you stop it?"

"I could. But if holding up my little finger would save him, I wouldn't
do it."

"Oh, William," she cried, throwing herself on her knees; "don't look
like that. I confess everything; visit it on me, but spare that boy."

"You confess, do you?" he said. "Get up. Get out of my house; you
shan't stay here."

But she would not go, but, hanging round him, kept saying, "Spare the
boy, William, spare the boy!" over and again, till he struck her in his
fury, and pulled her towards the door.

"Get out and herd with the gipsies you belong to," he said. "You witch,
you can't cry now."

"But," she moaned, "o