It was in no one feature that it lingered. You could not take the
eyes or mouth, or lines upon the cheek, and say, if this or that were
otherwise, it would not be so. Yet there it always lurked--something for
ever dimly seen, but ever there, and never absent for a moment. It was
the faintest, palest shadow of some look, to which an instant of intense
and most unutterable horror only could have given birth; but indistinct
and feeble as it was, it did suggest what that look must have been, and
fixed it in the mind as if it had had existence in a dream.

More faintly imaged, and wanting force and purpose, as it were, because
of his darkened intellect, there was this same stamp upon the son.
Seen in a picture, it must have had some legend with it, and would have
haunted those who looked upon the canvas. They who knew the Maypole
story, and could remember what the widow was, before her husband's and
his master's murder, understood it well. They recollected how the change
had come, and could call to mind that when her son was born, upon the
very day the deed was known, he bore upon his wrist what seemed a smear
of blood but half washed out.

'God save you, neighbour!' said the locksmith, as he followed her, with
the air of an old friend, into a little parlour where a cheerful fire
was burning.

'And you,' she answered smiling. 'Your kind heart has brought you
here again. Nothing will keep you at home, I know of old, if there are
friends to serve or comfort, out of doors.'

'Tut, tut,' returned the locksmith, rubbing his hands and warming them.
'You women are such talkers. What of the patient, neighbour?'