"That's why I thought maybe his son, if he had his father's heart .... and people are saying he has too .... maybe his son wouldn't send a poor mother away when she's in trouble and has nobody else to go to."
"Sit down, Mrs. Collister."
The old woman sat in the chair which Janet turned for her, and began on her story.
"It's about Bessie."
She had always been a good girl. No mother ever had a better. And if people were saying she had been in trouble before, might the Lord forgive them when their own time came, for it was lies they were putting on the girl.
"And if she's in trouble now, your Honour, it's like it's not all her own fault neither."
First there was her father. He had been shocking hard on the girl, shutting her out of the house in the dark of night and so throwing her into the way of temptation.
"Until they lay me under the sod I'll never get it out of my ears, Sir—-the sound of her foot going off on the street."
And when the girl came home again, looking that weak that it seemed as if the world wasn't willing to stand under her, the father had taunted her with coming back to eat them up, and maybe bringing another mouth to feed.
"So if she did the terrible shocking thing they're saying .... I don't know if she did, your Honour .... I don't know if she ever left the dairy loft from the minute I took her up to it until Cain the constable (may the Lord forgive him!) came dragging her down .... but if she did, it's like it was because the poor child was alone in the dark midnight, and out of herself entirely, and not knowing what she was doing, and perhaps freckened of what the old man would be saying in the morning."