down, and undone the latch before now, and looked out into the still,
black night, thinking to see her--and turned sick and sorrowful when I
heard no living sound but the sough of the wind dying away. Oh, speak
not to me of stopping here, when she may be perishing for hunger, like
the poor lad in the parable." And now she lifted up her voice, and wept
aloud.

Will was deeply grieved. He had been old enough to be told the family
shame when, more than two years before, his father had had his letter to
his daughter returned by her mistress in Manchester, telling him that
Lizzie had left her service some time--and why. He had sympathized with
his father's stern anger; though he had thought him something hard, it is
true, when he had forbidden his weeping, heart-broken wife to go and try
to find her poor sinning child, and declared that henceforth they would
have no daughter; that she should be as one dead, and her name never more
be named at market or at meal time, in blessing or in prayer. He had
held his peace, with compressed lips and contracted brow, when the
neighbours had noticed to him how poor Lizzie's death had aged both his
father and his mother; and how they thought the bereaved couple would
never hold up their heads again. He himself had felt as if that one
event had made him old before his time; and had envied Tom the tears he
had shed over poor, pretty, innocent, dead Lizzie. He thought about her
sometimes, till he ground his teeth together, and could have struck her
down in her shame. His mother had never named her to him until now.

"Mother!" said he, at last. "She may be dead. Most likely she is"

"No, Will; she is not dead," said Mrs. Leigh. "God will not let her die
till I've seen her once again. Thou dost not know how I've prayed and
prayed just once again to see her sweet face, and tell her I've forgiven