Only once again, I say, did Ben Walker, to my knowledge, sot foot on our doorstep. He tarried in Huddersfield for some months and his money flowed like water. Then he disappeared, and it was said he had gone to America with a woman who was no better than she should be. Truth was, the Brigg was getting too hot to hold him. The men who had been in the Luddite business began to pluck up heart as the time went on and no more arrests were made. And one fine night the man who kept the toll-gate at the Brigg heard loud cries for mercy, and rushing out was just in time to see the heels of a dozen men and to drag a drowning wretch out of the cut. It was Ben Walker, and he was all but done for. Then, I say, he vanished, and for years I heard no word of him. Then one wintry night--November I think it was--Mary and I were sat in the house by the fireside, she in the rocking chair my mother had loved of old and knitting as I had seen her that was gone knitting so often that the thread seemed a very part of my own life's warp; and I was sat smoking my evening pipe in the chair he that was gone had made to us more sacred than any monument in church or chapel, and the old clock was ticking steadily on to the bed-hour as sturdily as it had ticked for more years than I can tell. Only there was not to be heard through the rafters the heavy snoring of 'Siah as it had been heard in my father's days. 'Siah was snoring, I doubt not, but in a bed and a house of his own, and the not too gentle breathing of Martha swelled the harmony of his own. There came a knock at the door that gave us both a start. We had heard no footstep, and Vixen, a waspish daughter of the Vixen of other days, had not given tongue. Who could it be? "Does Mister Bamforth live here?" queried a voice that stirred a memory of I knew not what, but something painful, and my mind, without my willing it, was off on the scent. "He does. Dos't want him?" I said, barring the entrance but holding the door half open, whilst Mary had risen to her feet and held the light above her head, to see the better. "Aw've tramped fra Manchester, an' awn had newt to eit sin break o' day, an' aw beg yo' for the love of God to gi' me a crust an' th' price o' a bed or let me lie me dahn i' th' mistal." And as he spoke and his face struck stronger at me, it all came back. "It's Ben o' Buck's," I cried. "It's Ben o' Buck's," he said in a low voice, and hung down his head and said no more. I was for banging the door in his face, the hot blood surging to my face and anger and scorn in my heart. But Mary took the loaf and a slice of cheese from the table where our supper lay, and a coin from the window sill where the milk money was, and gave it to him, but turned her eyes from him as she gave it. And I knew that Mary had taken the better part, and there was no longer anger in my heart and I closed the door upon the figure that slouched away into the cold dark night.