ecause he looked so miserable. She would give him something to
eat and send him away, she said, and meanwhile Nellie should sit by the
drawing-room fire and wait for her. The child trusted her mother
implicitly and was completely reassured. Mrs. Goddard dried her eyes,
and re-entered the room. Nellie was curled up in a big chair with a book;
she looked up quickly.

"Why, mamma," she said, "you have been crying!"

"Have I, darling? I daresay it was the sight of that poor man. He was
very wretched."

"Is he gone?" asked the child.

It was unusually late and Nellie was beginning to be sleepy, so that she
was more easily quieted than she could have been in ordinary
circumstances. It might have struck her as strange that a wandering tramp
should know her mother's Christian name, as still more inexplicable that
her mother should have been willing to admit such a man at so late an
hour. She had been badly frightened, but trusting her mother as she did,
her terror had quickly disappeared and had been quickly followed by
sleepiness.

But Mrs. Goddard. did not sleep that night. She felt as though she could
never sleep again, and for many hours she lay thinking of the new element
of fear which had so suddenly come into her life at the very time when
she believed herself to be safe for many years to come. She longed to
know where her wretched husband was; whether he had found shelter for the
night, whether he was still free or whether he had even then fallen into
the hands of his pursuers. She knew that she could not have concealed him
in the house and that she had done all that lay in her power for him. But
she started at every sound, as the rain rattled against the shutters and
the wind howled down the chimney.

Walter Goddard, however, was safe for the present and was even
luxuriously lodged, considering his circumstances, for he was comfortably
installed amongst the hay in the barn of the "Feathers" inn. He had been
in Billingsfield since early in the afternoon and had considered
carefully the question of his quarters for the night. He had observed
from a distance the landlord of the said inn, and had boldly offered to
do a "day's work for a night's lodging." He said he was "tramping" his
way back from London to his home in Yorkshire; he knew enough of the
sound of the rough Yorkshire dialect to pass for a native of that county
amongst ignorant labourers who had never heard the real tongue. The
landlord of the Feathers c