'Let me lie down there,' he said, pointing to a broken-down old sofa
that ran under the window. 'I'm lonesome somehow, an I've told Louisa.'

His white hair and whiskers stood out wildly round his red face. He
looked old and ill, and the sympathetic Bessie was sorry for him.

She made him a bed on the sofa, and he lay there all night, restless,
and sighing heavily. He missed Eliza more than he had done yet, and was
oppressed with a vague sense of unhappiness. Once, in the middle of the
night when all was still, he stole upstairs in his stocking feet and
gently tried the cupboard door. It was quite safe, and he went down
contented.

An hour or two later he was off, trudging to Frampton through the August
dawn, with his bundle on his back.




SCENE III

Some five months passed away.

One January night the Independent minister of Clinton Magna was passing
down the village street. Clinton lay robed in light snow, and 'sparkling
to the moon.' The frozen pond beside the green, though it was nearly
eight o'clock, was still alive with children, sliding and shouting. All
around the gabled roofs stood laden and spotless. The woods behind the
village, and those running along the top of the snowy hill, were meshed