"Let me be, my daughter, I say I will speak--(Heaven keep my head cool!)--it's good for such as them to hear the truth once in a way. She's a dainty fine lady, and she taught him many fine things, besides religion, which I sets my face against. Tell her she took mighty good care of him--Ha! ha! the old tinker-woman had only one chance of teaching him anything--_but she taught him the patteran_!" The clergywoman had never moved, except that when the tinker-mother shook off her hand she locked her white fingers in front of her as before, and her eyes wandered from the old woman's face, and looked beyond it, as if she were doing what I have often done, and counting the bits of blue sky which show through the oak-leaves before they grow thick. But she must have been paying attention all the same, for she spoke very earnestly. "Good mother, listen to me. If I bought him, you sold him. Perhaps I did wrong to tempt you--perhaps I did wrong to hope to buy for myself what GOD was not pleased to give me. I was very young, and one makes many mistakes when one is young. I thought I was childless and unhappy, but I know now that only those are childless who have had children and lost them. "Do you know that in all the years my son was with me, I do not think there was a day when I did not think of you? I used to wonder if you regretted him, and I lived in dread of your getting him back; and when he ran away, I knew you had. I never agreed with the lawyer's plans--my husband will tell you so--I always wanted to find you to speak to you myself. I knew what you must feel, and I thought I should like you to know that I knew it.