Ursula ran down to the stream to meet him.
When they came up the path, it was not alone—John was helping a lame old woman, and his wife carried in her arms a sick child, on whom, when they entered the kitchen, Mary Baines threw herself in a passion of crying.
"What have they been doing to 'ee, Tommy?—'ee warn't like this when I left 'ee. Oh, they've been killing my lad, they have!"
"Hush!" said Mrs. Halifax; "we'll get him well again, please God. Listen to what the master's saying."
He was telling to the men who gathered round the kitchen-door the results of his journey.
It was—as I had expected from his countenance the first minute he appeared—fruitless. He had found all things at Kingswell as stated. Then he rode to the sheriff's; but Sir Ralph was absent, sent for to Luxmore Hall on very painful business.
"My friends," said the master, stopping abruptly in his narrative, "for a few hours you must make up your minds to sit still and bear it. Every man has to learn that lesson at times. Your landlord has—I would rather be the poorest among you than Lord Luxmore this night. Be patient; we'll lodge you all somehow. To-morrow I will pay your rent—get your goods back—and you shall begin the world again, as my tenants, not Lord Luxmore's."
"Hurrah!" shouted the men, easily satisfied; as working people are, who have been used all their days to live from hand to mouth, and to whom the present is all in all. They followed the master, who settled them in the barn; and then came back to consult with his wife as to where the women could be stowed away. So, in a short time, the five homeless families were cheerily disposed of—all but Mary Baines and her sick boy.
"What can we do with them?" said John, questioningly to Ursula.
"I see but one course. We must take him in; his mother says hunger is the chief thing that ails the lad. She fancies that he has had the measles; but our children have had it too, so there's no fear. Come up-stairs, Mary Baines."