'There is mother!' she cried in an almost joyful tone. She pointed to
a woman standing in the open doorway of a mean dwelling at no great
distance, in apparently anxious expectation. Mary Ransome hastened
forwards, and whispered a few sentences to her mother, who fondly
embraced her.

'I am very grateful to you, sir, for seeing Mary safely home. You do
not, I daresay, remember me?'

'You are greatly changed, I perceive, and not by years alone.'

'Ah, sir!' Tears started to the eyes of both mother and daughter.
'Would you,' added the woman, 'step in a moment. Perhaps a few words
from you might have effect.' She looked, whilst thus speaking, at her
weak, consumptive-looking husband, who was seated by the fireplace
with a large green baize-covered Bible open before him on a round
table. There is no sermon so impressive as that which gleams from an
apparently yawning and inevitable grave; and none, too, more quickly
forgotten, if by any resource of art, and reinvigoration of nature,
the tombward progress be arrested, and life pulsate joyously again. I
was about to make some remark upon the suicidal folly of persisting in
a course which almost necessarily led to misery and ruin, when the but
partially-closed doorway was darkened by the burly figure of Wyatt.

'A very nice company, by jingo!' growled the ruffian; 'you only want
the doctor to be quite complete. But hark ye, Ransome,' he continued,
addressing the sick man, who cowered beneath his scowling gaze like a
beaten hound--'mind and keep a still tongue in that calf's head of
yourn, or else prepare yourself to--to take--to take--what follows.
You know me as well as I do you. Good-night.'