"She be that beautiful," they would say amongst themselves, and gradually a few remembered how the vicar had baptized a babe who was born at the Holt and how he had buried the mother a few days later. "If she be that babe," they said, "surely she be one of us." And they straightway adopted her.
Holt Farm, though not in itself an extensive holding, consisted of fields which had always been used by the vicar for grazing purposes. Also there was an acre or two of agricultural land, where the corn and the barley waved in their seasons. The vicar had superintended the farming of all this, and had gathered in the money, but now Patience took all things into her own hands. She engaged the labourers, she presided over the dairy, and the cattle and the poultry yard became a great feature of the place. Rolfe was her head man and Martha saw to the house, and the vicar went each day to the Holt to see that all was well with Patience, and if she needed counsel, he gave it.
This homecoming of these two strangers changed many things in the hamlet of St. Mary's. Holt Farm became a centre to which they all looked. In that scattered parish for miles round the peasants soon learnt that for every ill and for every sorrow they would find help and sympathy there, so they came without fear and returned to their own homes cured, they said, both in body and soul.
Never for one moment did Agnes complain of the tasks set her by the vicar. Jessie was always there, and Jessie always helped her as long as she needed help, but she had come to her teacher with a clear, untired mind, and everything was easy to her. The vicar was a wonderful teacher; as he had taught Jessie, so he taught Agnes, not dry regulation lessons, but the pith of knowledge of people and of things. He let her talk; he let her tell him all her difficulties. She had but little clear knowledge of religion. This he put down to her foreign life. What she did know was indeed a strange medley; but with his strong mind he made things plain to her, so that she learnt to see and to understand rightly.
She was very confidential with him, as if he had been her father.
"I do not know anything about my father or my mother," she said one day, "only that they are dead." And tears gathered in her eyes so that the vicar was moved. He laid his hand on her, saying, "I baptized you, Agnes, and the same night your mother died. Will you come and see where her body lies until the great resurrection day?" He took her by the hand, and Jessie followed them. The three knelt before the altar, in front of which was a black cross embedded in the stone. It had been the vicar's own handiwork.
When they rose from their knees Agnes asked under her voice:
"What was my mother's name?"
"Go home and ask Dame Patience," said the vicar. "I cannot tell you; she is your guardian."
Agnes went home, and that night the vicar came and spoke to Patience, and told her she had best tell the child the mystery of her birth.