it from the back, she found her husband sitting with his
pipe at the open door and reading his newspaper. Three out of her own
four children were playing in the lane, otherwise there was no one
about.

Isaac greeted her with a nod and slight lightening of the eyes, which,
however, hardly disturbed the habitual sombreness of the face. He was
a dark, finely featured man, with grizzled hair, carrying himself with
an air of sleepy melancholy. He was much older than his wife, and was
a prominent leader in the little Independent chapel of the village.
His melancholy could give way on occasion to fits of violent temper.
For instance, he had been almost beside himself when Bessie, who had
leanings to the Establishment, as providing a far more crowded and
entertaining place of resort on Sundays than her husband's chapel, had
rashly proposed to have the youngest baby christened in church. Other
Independents did it freely--why not she? But Isaac had been nearly mad
with wrath, and Bessie had fled upstairs from him, with her baby, and
bolted the bedroom door in bodily terror. Otherwise, he was a most
docile husband--in the neighbours' opinion, docile to absurdity. He
complained of nothing, and took notice of little. Bessie's untidy ways
left him indifferent; his main interest was in a kind of religious
dreaming, and in an Independent paper to which he occasionally wrote a
letter. He was a gardener at a small house on the hill, and had rather
more education than most of his fellows in the village. For the rest,
he was fond of his children, and, in his heart of hearts, exceedingly
proud of his wife, her liveliness and her good looks. She had been a
remarkably pretty girl when he married her, some eight years after his
first wife's death, and there was a great difference of age between
them. His two elder children by his first marriage had long since left
home. The girl was in service. It troubled him to think of the boy,
who had fallen into bad ways early. Bessie's children were all small,
and she herself still young, though over thirty.

When Bessie came up to him, she looked round to see that no one could
hear. Then she stooped and told him her errand in a panting whisper.
He must go down and fetch the box at once. She had promised John
Borrofull that they would stand by him. They were his own flesh and
blood--and the cupboard had a capital lock--and there wasn't no fear of
it at all.

Isaac listened to her at