yearned to persuade him to her own belief. "Thou never asked, and
thou'rt too like thy father for me to tell without asking--but it were
all to be near Lizzie's old place that I settled down on this side o'
Manchester; and the very day at after we came, I went to her old missus,
and asked to speak a word wi' her. I had a strong mind to cast it up to
her, that she should ha' sent my poor lass away, without telling on it to
us first; but she were in black, and looked so sad I could na' find in my
heart to threep it up. But I did ask her a bit about our Lizzie. The
master would have turned her away at a day's warning (he's gone to
t'other place; I hope he'll meet wi' more mercy there than he showed our
Lizzie--I do), and when the missus asked her should she write to us, she
says Lizzie shook her head; and when she speered at her again, the poor
lass went down on her knees, and begged her not, for she said it would
break my heart (as it has done, Will--God knows it has)," said the poor
mother, choking with her struggle to keep down her hard overmastering
grief, "and her father would curse her--Oh, God, teach me to be patient."
She could not speak for a few minutes--"and the lass threatened, and said
she'd go drown herself in the canal, if the missus wrote home--and so--

"Well! I'd got a trace of my child--the missus thought she'd gone to th'
workhouse to be nursed; and there I went--and there, sure enough, she had
been--and they'd turned her out as she were strong, and told her she were
young enough to work--but whatten kind o' work would be open to her, lad,
and her baby to keep?"

Will listened to his mother's tale with deep sympathy, not unmixed with
the old bitter shame. But the opening of her heart had unlocked his, and
after awhile he spoke--

"Mother! I think I'd e'en better go home. Tom can stay wi' thee. I