"a bad dream. I—I scarcely knowed your face, Jem it was so altered."
He sank back upon his cushions and stared at her. He knew he had been having no bad dream. His dreams were not half so evil and bitter when he slept as they were in these days when he wakened.
"You always had such a good face, Jem," she said, "and such a kind one. When you was a boy"
He stopped her almost sullenly.
"I'm not a boy now," he said. "That's put away and done with."
"No," she answered, "that's true, my dear; but you've lived an innocent life, an'—an' never done no wrong—no more than you did when you was one. And your face was so altered."
Her voice died away into a silence which, somehow, neither of them could break.
It was Granny Dixon who revealed the truth in its barest form. Perhaps no man nor woman in Broxton knew more of it than this respectable ancient matron. Haworth and his iniquities had been the spice of her later life. The fact that his name was being mentioned in a conversation never escaped her; she discovered it as if by magic and invariably commanded that the incident under discussion be repeated at the top of the reciter's voice for her benefit, occasionally somewhat to the confusion of the honest matron in question.
How it had happened that she had not betrayed all to Mrs. Haworth at once was a mystery to remain unsolved. During the little woman's visits to the cottage, Mrs. Briarley existed in a chronic condition of fear and trembling.
"She'll be out wi' it some o' these days, mark me," she
