ad come out of prison; and although not being tried, his clothes
were still in decency, they had great holes in them, and the gloss all
gone to a smell of mere hedges and ditches. The hat on his head was
quite out of the fashion, even if it could be called a hat at all, and
his beautiful beard had no sign of a comb, and he looked as old again as
he had looked a month ago.

"'I know all about it. You need not be afraid,' he said, as I took him
to the breakfast-room, where no one up stairs could hear us. 'I know
that my children are all dead and buried, except the one that was not
born yet. Ill news flies quick. I know all about it. George, Henrietta,
Jack, Alf, little Vi, and Tiny. I have seen their graves and counted
them, while the fool of a policeman beat his gloves through the hedge
within a rod of me. Oh yes, I have much to be thankful for. My life is
in my own hand now.'

"'Oh, master; oh, Captain; oh, my lord!' I cried; 'for the sake of God
in heaven, don't talk like that. Think of your sweet wife, your dear
lady.'

"'Betsy,' he answered, with his eyes full upon me, noble, yet frightful
to look at, 'I am come to see my wife. Go and let her know it, according
to your own discretion.'

"My discretion would have been not to let him see her, but go on and
write to her from foreign countries, with the salt sea between them; but
I give you my word that I had no discretion, but from pity and majesty
obeyed him. I knew that he must have broken prison, and by good rights
ought to be starving. But I could no more offer him the cold ham and
pullet than take him by his beard and shake him.

"'Is he come, at last, at last?' my poor mistress said, whose wits were
wandering after her children. 'At last, at last! Then he will find them
all.'

"'Yes, ma'am, at last, at the last he will,' I answered, while I thought
of the burial service, which I had heard three times in a week--for the
little ones went to their graves in pairs to save ceremony; likewise of
the Epistle of Saint Paul, which is not like our Lord's way of talking
at all, but arguing instead of comforting. And not to catch her up in
that weak state, I said, 'He will find every one of them, ma'am.'

"'Oh, but I want him for himself, for himself, as much as all the rest
put together,' my dear lady said, without listening to me, but putting
her hand to her ear to hearken for even so much as a mouse on the
stairs. 'Do bring him, Betsy; only bring him, Betsy, and th