stealing over him, and the pleasant dream of home and
Edith and Zoe, in which he had been living through the day, was fading
away with every word the woman said.

'The funny part of it were that she vowed and declared as she put the
child at your door, and never came this way at all; leastways, from
what she said it must abeen your house, for she said it was hard by the
church and had a thick hedge, and that there was a kind sorter body as
she see there in the morning, as must abeen Mrs Sands, and nobody else
from her account. She said she was in a heap of trouble just then, her
husband ill and a deal more, and she was pretty nigh at her wits' end,
and that, without thinking twice what she were about, she wropt the
baby up and laid it close agin the door of the house where she'd seen
the kind-looking body. She would have it as it was there, say what I
would; but, maybe, poor soul, she were mazed, and hardly knew where she
were.

'She went to your house to-day, and Mrs Sands were quite put out with
her, being busy too, and expecting company, and thought it were just
her impidence; but there! I knows what trouble is, and how it just
mazes a body, for I could no more tell where I went nor what I did
yesterday than that table there. And another queer thing is as she
didn't know nothing about the name, and neither she nor her husband
can't read or write noways, so she couldn't have wrote it down, and she
'd never heard tell of such a name as Zoe, and didn't like it neither.
She'd always ameant it to be Rachel, as had been her mother's name
before her, and her grandmother's too.'

'Are you quite certain she was the mother?'

'Certain? Why, you 'd only to see the two together to be sure of it.
I'd not have let her go, not were it ever so, if it hadn't been as
clear as daylight; and just now too, when I seems to want her for a bit
of comfort.' And here Mrs Gray relapsed into her apron.

Mr Robins sat for a minute looking at her in silence, and then got up,
and without a word went out into the dark night, mechanically taking
the way to his house, and then turning on to the high-road to
Smithurst, tramping along through the mud and dead leaves with a dull,
heavy persistence.

Anything was better than going back to the empty silence of his house
and Jane Sands' expectant face, and the pretty, white-curtained room
with the cot all ready for little Zoe, who was already miles away along
that dark road before him, sleepi