"What!" I exclaimed, "I never knew that you were a married man, Tim."

He dropped his head upon his hand again, still pulling nervously at the
grass with the other.

"Th' law says I beant, Mester," he answered in a painful, strained
fashion. "I conna tell mysen what God-a'-moighty 'ud say about it."

"I don't understand," I faltered; "you don't mean to say the poor girl
never was your wife, Hibblethwaite."

"That's what th' law says," slowly; "I thowt different mysen, an' so did
th' poor lass. That's what's the matter, Mester; that's th' trouble."

The other nervous hand went up to his bent face for a minute and hid it,
but I did not speak. There was so much of strange grief in his simple
movement that I felt words would be out of place. It was not my dogged,
inexplicable "hand" who was sitting before me in the bright moonlight
on the baby's grave; it was a man with a hidden history of some tragic
sorrow long kept secret in his homely breast,--perhaps a history very
few of us could read aright. I would not question him, though I fancied
he meant to explain himself. I knew that if he was willing to tell me
the truth it was best that he should choose his own time for it, and so
I let him alone.

And before I had waited very long he broke the silence himself, as I had
thought he would.

"It wur welly about six year ago I comn here," he said, "more or less,
welly about six year. I wur a quiet chap then, Mester, an' had na many
friends, but I had more than I ha' now. Happen I wur better nater'd, but
just as loike I wur loigh-ter-hearted--but that's nowt to do wi' it.

"I had na been here more than a week when theer comes a young woman to
moind a loom i' th' next room to me, an' this young woman bein'
pretty an' modest takes my fancy. She wur na loike th' rest o' the
wenches--loud talkin' an' slattern i' her ways; she wur just quiet loike
and nowt else. First time I seed her I says to mysen, 'Theer's a lass
'at's seed trouble;' an' somehow every toime I seed her afterward
I says to mysen, 'Theer's a lass 'at's seed trouble.' It wur i'
her eye--she had a soft loike brown eye, Mester--an' it wur i' her
voice--her voice wur soft loike, too--I sometimes thowt it wur plain to
be seed even i' her dress. If she'd been born a lady she'd ha' been one
o' th' foine soart, an' as she'd been born a factory-lass she wur one
o' th' foine soart still. So I took to watchin' her an' tryin' to mak'
friends wi her, but I never had much l