bewildered as she was with all the town necessities of her new manner of life; but when her house was “sided,” and the boys come home from their work in the evening, she would put on her things and steal out, unnoticed, as she thought, but not without many a heavy sigh from Will, after she had closed the house-door and departed.  It was often past midnight before she came back, pale and weary, with almost a guilty look upon her face; but that face so full of disappointment and hope deferred, that Will had never the heart to say what he thought of the folly and hopelessness of the search.  Night after night it was renewed, till days grew to weeks, and weeks to months.  All this time Will did his duty towards her as well as he could, without having sympathy with her.  He stayed at home in the evenings for Tom’s sake, and often wished he had Tom’s pleasure in reading, for the time hung heavy on his hands as he sat up for his mother.

I need not tell you how the mother spent the weary hours.  And yet I will tell you something.  She used to wander out, at first as if without a purpose, till she rallied her thoughts, and brought all her energies to bear on the one point; then she went with earnest patience along the least-known ways to some new part of the town, looking wistfully with dumb entreaty into people’s faces; sometimes catching a glimpse of a figure which had a kind of momentary likeness to her child’s, and following that figure with never-wearying perseverance, till some light from shop or lamp showed the cold strange face which was not her daughter’s.  Once or twice a kind-hearted passer-by, struck by her look of yearning woe, turned back and offered help, or asked her what she wanted.  When so spoken to, she answered only, “You don’t know a poor girl they call Lizzie Leigh, do you?” and when they denied all knowledge, she shook her head, and went on again.  I think they believed her to be crazy.  But she never spoke first to any one.  She sometimes took a few minutes’ rest on the door-steps, and sometimes (very seldom) covered her face and cried; but she could not afford to lose time and chances in this way; while her eyes were blinded with tears, the lost one might pass by unseen.

One evening, in the rich time of shortening autumn-days, Will saw an old man, who, without being absolutely drunk, could not guide himself rightly along the foot-path, and was mocked for his unsteadiness of gait by the idle boys of the neighbourhood.  For his father’s sake, Will regarded old age with tenderness, even when most degraded and removed from the stern virtues which dignified that father; so he took the old man home, and seemed to believe his often-repeated assertions, that he drank nothing but water.  The stranger tried to stiffen himself up into steadiness as he drew nearer home, as if there some one there for whose respect he cared even in his half-intoxicated state, or whose feelings he feared to grieve.  His home was exquisitely clean and neat, even in outside appearance; threshold, window, and windowsill were outward signs of some spirit of purity within.  Will was rewarded for his attention by a bright glance of thanks, succeeded by a blush of shame, from a young woman of twenty or thereabouts.  She did not speak or second her father’s hospitable invitations to him to be seated.  She seemed unwilling that a stranger should witness her father’s attempts at stately sobriety, and Will could not bear to stay and see her distress.  But when the old man, with many a flabby shake of the hand, kept asking him to come again some other evening, and see them, Will sought her downcast eyes, and, though he could not read their veiled meaning, he answered, timidly, “If it’s agreeable to everybody, I’ll come, and thank ye.”  But there was no answer from the girl, to whom this speech was in reality addressed; and Will left the house, liking her all the better for never speaking.

He thought about her a great deal for the next day or two; he scolded himself for being so foolish as to think of her, and then fell to with fresh vigour, and thought of her more than ever.  He tried to depreciate her: he told himself she was not pretty, and then made indignant answer that he liked her looks much better than any beauty of them all.  He wished he was not so country-looking, so red-faced, so broad-shouldered; while she was like a lady, with her smooth, colourless complexion, her bright dark hair, and her spotless dress.  Pretty or not pretty she drew his footsteps towards her; he could not resist the impulse that made him wish to see her once more, and find out some fault which should unloose his heart from her unconscious keeping.  But there she was, pure and maidenly as before.  He sat and looked, answering her father at cross-purposes, while she drew more and more into the shadow of the chimney-corner out of sight.  Then the spirit that possessed him (it was not he himself, sure, that did so impudent a thing!) made him get up and carry the candle to a different place, under the pretence of giving her more light at her sewing, but in reality to be able to see her better.  She could not stand this much longer, but jumped up and said she must put her little niece to bed; and surely there never was, before or since, so troublesome a child of two years old, for though Will stayed an hour and a half longer, she never came down again.  He won the father’s heart, though, by his capacity as a listener; for some people are not at all particular, and, so that they themselves may talk on undisturbed, are not so unreasonable as to expect attention to what they say.

Will did gather this much, however, from the old man’s talk.  He had once been quite in a genteel line of business, but had failed for more money than any greengrocer he had heard of; at least, any who did not mix up fish and game with green-grocery proper.  This grand failure seemed to have been the event of his life, and one on which he dwelt with a strange kind of pride.  It appeared as if at present he rested from his past exertions (in the bankrupt line), and depended on his daughter, who kept a small school for very young children.  But all these particulars Will only remembered and understood when he had left the house; at the time he heard them, he was thinking of Susan.  After he had made good his footing at Mr. Palmer’s, he was not long, you may be sure, without finding some reason for returning again and again.  He listened to her father, he talked to the little niece, but he looked at Susan, both while he listened and while he talked.  Her father kept on insisting upon his former gentility, the details of which would have appeared very questionable to Will’s mind, if the sweet, delicate, modest Susan had not thrown an inexplicable air of refinement over all she came near.  She never spoke much; she was generally diligently at work; but when she moved it was so noiselessly, and when she did speak, it was in so low and soft a voice, that silence, speech, motion, and stillness alike seemed to remove her high above Will’s reach into some saintly and inaccessible air of glory—high above his reach, even as she knew him!  And, if she were made acquainted with the dark secret behind of his sister’s shame, which was kept ever present to his mind by his mother’s nightly search among the outcast and forsaken, would not Susan shrink away from him with loathing, as if he were tainted by the involuntary relationship?  This was his dread; and thereupon followed a resolution that he would withdraw from her sweet company before it was too late.  So he resisted internal temptation, and stayed at home, and suffered and sighed.  He became angry with his mother for her untiring patience in seeking for one who he could not help hoping was dead rather than alive.  He spoke sharply to her, and received only such sad deprecatory answers as made him reproach himself, and still more lose sight of peace of mind.  This struggle could not last long without affecting his health; and Tom, his sole companion