his poor wife's earnings.

Tom had long lost sight of the honest old parson. There was shame
mixed with his degradation. He had grace enough left when he saw the
thin figure of "t' sir" walking along the road to turn out of his way
and avoid meeting him. The clergyman shook his head, and sometimes
groaned, when his name was mentioned. His horror and regret were more
for the poor wife than for the relapsed sinner, for her case was
pitiable indeed.

Her brother, Jack Everton, coming over from Hexley, having heard
stories of all this, determined to beat Tom, for his ill-treatment of
his sister, within an inch of his life. Luckily, perhaps, for all
concerned, Tom happened to be away upon one of his long excursions,
and poor Nell besought her brother, in extremity of terror, not to
interpose between them. So he took his leave and went home muttering
and sulky.

Now it happened a few months later that Nelly Chuff fell sick. She had
been ailing, as heartbroken people do, for a good while. But now the
end had come.

There was a coroner's inquest when she died, for the doctor had
doubts as to whether a blow had not, at least, hastened her death.
Nothing certain, however, came of the inquiry. Tom Chuff had left his
home more than two days before his wife's death. He was absent upon
his lawless business still when the coroner had held his quest.

Jack Everton came over from Hexley to attend the dismal obsequies of
his sister. He was more incensed than ever with the wicked husband,
who, one way or other, had hastened Nelly's death. The inquest had
closed early in the day. The husband had not appeared.

An occasional companion--perhaps I ought to say accomplice--of Chuff's
happened to turn up. He had left him on the borders of Westmoreland,
and said he would probably be home next day. But Everton affected not
to believe it. Perhaps it was to Tom Chuff, he suggested, a secret
satisfaction to crown the history of his bad married life with the
scandal of his absence from the funeral of his neglected and abused
wife.

Everton had taken on himself the direction of the melancholy
preparations. He had ordered a grave to be opened for his sister
beside her mother's, in Shackleton churchyard, at the other side of
the moor. For the purpose, as I have said, of marking the callous
neglect of her husband, he determined that the funeral should take
place that night. His brother Dick had accompanied him, and they and
his sister, with Mar