"No! I can't say as I did. But he were put on as a workman."
"It's may be only one of them policemen, disguised."
"Nay; they'd never go for to do that, and trick me into telling on my own son. It would be like seething a kid in its mother's milk; and that th' Bible forbids."
"I don't know," replied the man.
Soon afterwards he went away, feeling unable to comfort, yet distressed at the sight of sorrow; she would fain have detained him, but go he would. And she was alone.
She never for an instant believed Jem guilty; she would have doubted if the sun were fire, first: but sorrow, desolation, and, at times, anger took possession of her mind. She told the unconscious Alice, hoping to rouse her to sympathy; and then was disappointed, because, still smiling and calm, she murmured of her mother, and the happy days of infancy.
CHAPTER XX.
MARY'S DREAM—AND THE AWAKENING.
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"I saw where stark and cold he lay, Beneath the gallows-tree, And every one did point and say, ''Twas there he died for thee!' * * ** "Oh! weeping heart! Oh, bleeding heart! What boots thy pity now? Bid from his eyes that shade depart, That death-damp from his brow!" "The Birtle Tragedy." |