dwelling room, where the stranger, standing by the three-legged
table, stroked his lips twice or thrice with his hand, as if to
smooth out a cynical smile which strove to disturb their decorous
and somewhat haughty compression. "What's ten shilling a week to
you? Why, it's food to you, and drink to you, and firing to you,
and boots for the children's feet. Look here, my woman. You've had
a sore affliction, but that's not to say you're to throw good luck
in the dirt for a whimsey. This matter's settled."

And the miller strode back into the inner room, whilst his wife sat
upon a sack of barley, wringing her hands, and moaning, "I couldn't
do my duty by un, maester, I couldn't do my duty by un."

This she repeated at intervals, with her apron over her face, as
before; and then, suddenly aware that her husband had left her, she
hurried into the inner room to plead her own cause. It was too
late. The strangers had gone. The miller was not there, and the
baby lay on the end of the press bedstead, wailing as bitterly as
the mother herself.

It had been placed there, with a big bundle of clothes by it, before
the miller came back, and he had found it so. He found the stranger
too, with his hat on his head, and his cloak fastened, glancing from
time to time at the child, and then withdrawing his glance hastily,
and looking forcedly round at the meagre furnishing of the miller's
room, and then back at the little bundle on the bed, and away again.
The woman stood with her back to the press-bed, her striped shawl
drawn tightly round her, and her hands folded together as closely as
her long lip pressed the heavy one below.