o
me, but I can't help speaking sharp to him; though maybe I'm sorry after
I done it, for there's only the two on us now, and we'll have to worry
along together."

The vicar shook his head.

"Hard blows are bad things, Mrs Darvell, but hard words do quite as
much mischief in their way. If your husband has driven Frank from home,
does it mend matters for you to drive your husband to the public-house?"

"There's truth in what you say, sir," said Mrs Darvell, rubbing her
arms with her apron; "but I don't seem as if I cared to do any different
now the boy's gone. I've allers had a quick tongue from a gall, and
Darvell, he must just take the consequences."

"But suppose," said the vicar, looking earnestly at her, "suppose that
Frank were to come back to you safe and well, and Darvell were to
promise never to be so harsh to him again, wouldn't you try then to keep
from saying sharp things?"

Mrs Darvell's black eyes fixed themselves keenly on the vicar's face.

"You've heard summat, sir?" she said, laying one damp red hand on his
coat-sleeve. "Is the lad livin'? Just tell me that. Is he livin'?"

"Look there," said the vicar.

He turned and pointed down the road, where, at the top of the hill
leading up from Danecross, two figures were just visible. They came
nearer and nearer. One was that of Darvell, broad-shouldered and
heavily built, but the other one was small and slender, and had rough
yellow hair.

Mrs Darvell was a woman of decisive action as well as of a quick
tongue. One look was enough for her. She immediately took off her
pattens, which had iron rings to them, and were not adapted for rapid
movement, and placed them quickly and quite unconsciously in the vicar's
arms as he stood beside her.

"Bless you, sir!" she said.

Before he had realised his situation she had flown down the road,
reached the two figures, and enveloped Frank in her embrace, Darvell
standing by meanwhile with a broad smile on his fair and foolish
countenance.

The neighbours gathered round the group, and all the dogs, and pigs, and
chickens belonging to the settlement also drew near. Jack Gunn's donkey
looked over the hedge, his furry ears showing a pointed interest in the
affair, and in the distance the vicar surveyed the scene from the
cottage door, still holding Mrs Darvell's pattens.

So Frank had got home again; and after all his wanderings he found that:

"From east to west
At home is best."

STORY T