bag, and folded it very neatly, and stowed it away. And then he
drew near the inner door, and peeped into the room.

His poor wife seemed to be in no better case than before. She sat
on the old rocking-chair, swinging backwards and forwards, and
beating her hands upon her knees in silence, and making no movement
to comfort the wailing little creature on the bed.

For the first time there came upon the windmiller a sense of the
fact that it is an uncertain and a rather dangerous game to drive a
desperate woman into a corner. His missus was as soft-hearted a
soul as ever lived, and for her to sit unmoved by the weeping of a
neglected child was a proof that something was very far wrong
indeed. One or two nasty stories of what tender-hearted women had
done when "crazed" by grief haunted him. The gold seemed to grow
hot at the bottom of his pocket. He wished he had got at the
stranger's name and address, in case it should be desirable to annul
the bargain. He wished the missus would cry again, that silence was
worse than any thing. He wished it did not just happen to come into
his head that her grandmother went "melancholy mad" when she was
left a young widow, and that she had had an uncle in business who
died of softening of the brain.

He wished she would move across the room and take up the child, with
an intensity that almost amounted to prayer. And, in the votive
spirit which generally comes with such moments, he mentally resolved
that, if his missus would but "take to" the infant, he would humor
her on all other points just now to the best of his power.

A strange fulfilment often treads on the heels of such vows. At