Turning her eyes lazily towards this path, Rebecca was startled by the sight of a figure approaching slowly in the moonlight, a man, broad-shouldered, stalwart, walking with that careless freedom of gait which betokens the habitual pedestrian, the wanderer who has tramped over many a hill-side, and traversed many a stony road, a nomad by instinct and habit. He came straight on, without pause or uncertainty, came straight to the gate, and looked in at the woman sitting on the door-step. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘it was the straight tip Josh Collins gave me. Good evening, mother.’ The woman emptied the ashes of her pipe upon the door-step before she answered this filial greeting. Then she looked up at the wanderer frowningly. ‘What brings you here?’ ‘There’s a heartless question!’ cried the man. ‘What brings a son to look after his blessed old mother? Do you allow nothing for family feeling?’ ‘Not in you, Paul, or any of your breed. What brought you here?’ ‘You’d better let me in first, and give me something to eat and drink. I don’t care about looking through iron bars, like a wild beast in Wombwell’s show.’ Rebecca hesitated—looked at her son doubtfully for a minute or so before she made up her mind to admit him, weighed the possibilities of the case, and then took her key and unlocked the gate. If it had been practicable to keep this returned prodigal outside without peril to herself, she would have done it, but she knew her son’s disposition too well to trifle with feelings which were apt to express themselves with a savage freedom. ‘Come in,’ she said, sulkily, ‘and eat your fill, and go your ways when you’ve eaten. It was an ill wind for me that blew you this way.’ ‘That’s not over-kind from a mother,’ responded the nomad, carelessly. ‘I’ve had work enough to find you since you gave us the slip at Westerham fair.’ ‘You might have been content to lose me, considering the little store you ever set by me,’ retorted Rebecca, bitterly. ‘Well, perhaps I might have brought myself to look at it in that light, if I hadn’t heard of you two or three months ago from a mate of mine in the broom trade, who happened to pass this way last summer, and saw you here, squatting in the sun like a toad. He made a few inquiries about you—out of friendliness to me—in the village yonder, and heard that you were living on the fat of the land, and had enough to spare. Living in service—you, that were brought up to something better than taking any man’s wages—and eating the bread of dependence. So I put two and two together, and thought perhaps you’d contrived to save a little bit of money by this time, and would help me with a pound or two if I looked you up. It would be hard lines if a mother refused help to her son.’