and we can live on very little. We haven't got
any rent to pay, and only ourselves and grandfather to keep, and Martha
is as good as a woman grown. We'll manage, father, and take care of
little Nan.'

'Stephen and I are not bad, father,' added Martha, speaking up proudly;
'I am not like Black Bess of Botfield. Mother always told me I was to do
my duty; and I always do it. I can wash, and sew, and iron, and bake, and
knit. Why, often and often we've had no more than Stephen's earnings,
when you've been to the Red Lion on reckoning nights.'

'Hush, hush, Martha!' whispered Stephen.

'No, it's true,' groaned the dying father; 'God Almighty, have mercy on
me! Stephen, hearken to me, and thee too, Martha, while I tell you about
this place, and what you are to do when I'm gone.'

He paused for a minute or two, looking earnestly at the crouching old man
in the chimney-corner.

'Grandfather's quite simple,' he said, 'and he's dark, too, and doesn't
know what any one is saying. But I know thee'lt be good to him, Stephen.
Hearken, children: your poor old grandfather was once in jail, and was
sent across the seas, for a thief.'

'Father!' cried Stephen, in a tone of deep distress; and he turned
quickly to the old man, remembering how often he had sat upon his knees
by the winter fire, and how many summer days he had rambled with him over
the uplands after the sheep. His grandfather had been far kinder to him
than his own father; and his heart swelled with anger as he went and laid
his arm round the bending neck of the old man, who looked up in his face
and laughed heartily.

'Come back, Stephen; it's true,' gasped James Fern. 'Poor mother and me
came here, where nobody knew us, while he was away for more than twenty
years; and she built a hut for-us to live in till he came back. I was a
little lad then, but as soon as I was big enough she made me learn to
read and write, that I might send letters to him beyond the seas and none
of the neighbours know. She'd often make me read to her about a poor
fellow who had left home and gone to a far country, and when he came home
again, how his father saw him a long way off. Well, she was just like
that when she'd heard that he was landed in England; she did nought but
sit over the bent of the hill yonder, peering along the road to Botfield;
and one evening at sundown she saw something, little more than a speck
upon the turf, and she'd a feeling come over her that it was he, and she