ow'd Amanda bed come back. Hoo seed th' leet go aat and co'd aat
at th' top o' her voice, "Amanda's come back." Hoo remembers thee,
Amanda, an' hoo's never stop't talkin' abaat thee. Tha'rt eight
year owder nor hoo is--poor lass! hoo's lost her leg sin' thaa
seed her. It wor a bad do, aw con tell thee; but hoo's as lively
as a cricket, bless her! and often talks abaat thee, and wonders
where thaa'd getten to. Let's see, lass, it's five years sin thaa
left us, isn't it?' And then, remembering the whole story of
Amanda, which in her excitement she had forgotten, and the great
trouble and the great joy which that night fought for supremacy in
the little moorland home, she stopped, and with a tear-streamed
face rushed up to Amanda, and said: 'What am I talkin' abaat,
lass? I'd clean forgetten,' and then she, too, imprinted on
Amanda's lips a caress of welcome.

It was late that night when Milly asked her father to go up Pinner
Brow and fetch her mother home. When he reached the house he found
the two women and the girl upon their knees, for Milly's mother
was a good woman, and to her goodness was added a mother's heart.
Her own sorrow had taught her to weep with those who weep, and a
great trial through which she had passed in her girlhood days, and
through which she had passed scathless, led her to look on Amanda
with pitying love. Abraham paused upon the threshold as he heard
the sound of his wife's voice in prayer, and when, half an hour
afterwards, they together descended the brow towards their home,
he said:

'Thaa sees, lass, Milly's angel een wor on th' watch a'ter all.'

'Yi,' said his wife, 'and they see'd a returnin' sinner. But hoo's
safe naa; hoo's getten back to her mother, and hoo's getten back
to God.'

'Where hes hoo bin, missus, thinksto?'

'Nay, lad, I never ax'd her. I know where hoo's getten to, and
that's enugh. I'm noan one for sperrin (asking questions) baat th'
past.'

'But they'll be wantin' to know up at th' chapel where hoo's bin.'

'They'll happen do more good by doin' by Amanda as th' Almeety
does.'

'Doesto mean i' His judgments?'

'Nowe! theer's summat more wonderful nor them.'

'What doesto mean?'

'I mean His FORGEETFULNESS.'

II.

LIGHT AT EVENTIDE.

While Amanda's return aroused the curiosity of Rehoboth, it drew
few callers to the cottage on Pinner's Brow. Not that the
villagers were all wanting in kindliness, but Amanda's mother,
being a woman of strong reserv