'This good-looking person is, I daresay, a sweetheart of yours; so I'll just keep astern out of ear-shot. My road lies past your dwelling.' The girl appeared to understand me, and, reassured, walked on, Wyatt lopping sullenly along beside her. I did not choose to have a fellow of his stamp, and in his present mood, walking behind _me_. Nothing was said that I heard for about a mile and a half, when Wyatt, with a snarling 'good-night' to the girl, turned off by a path on the left, and was quickly out of sight. 'I am not very far from home now, sir,' said the young woman hesitatingly. She thought, perhaps, that I might leave her, now Wyatt had disappeared. 'Pray go on, then,' I said; 'I will see you safe there, though somewhat pressed for time.' We walked side by side, and after awhile she said in a low tone, and with still downcast eyes: 'My mother lived servant in your family once, sir.' 'The deuce! Your name is Ransome, then, I suspect.' 'Yes, sir--Mary Ransome.' A sad sigh accompanied these words. I pitied the poor girl from my heart, but having nothing very consolatory to suggest, I held my peace. 'There is mother!' she cried in an almost joyful tone. She pointed to a woman standing in the open doorway of a mean dwelling at no great distance, in apparently anxious expectation. Mary Ransome hastened forwards, and whispered a few sentences to her mother, who fondly embraced her. 'I am very grateful to you, sir, for seeing Mary safely home. You do not, I daresay, remember me?' 'You are greatly changed, I perceive, and not by years alone.' 'Ah, sir!' Tears started to the eyes of both mother and daughter. 'Would you,' added the woman, 'step in a moment. Perhaps a few words from you might have effect.' She looked, whilst thus speaking, at her weak, consumptive-looking husband, who was seated by the fireplace with a large green baize-covered Bible open before him on a round table. There is no sermon so impressive as that which gleams from an apparently yawning and inevitable grave; and none, too, more quickly forgotten, if by any resource of art, and reinvigoration of nature, the tombward progress be arrested, and life pulsate joyously again. I was about to make some remark upon the suicidal folly of persisting in a course which almost necessarily led to misery and ruin, when the but partially-closed doorway was darkened by the burly figure of Wyatt. 'A very nice company, by jingo!' growled the ruffian; 'you only want the doctor to be quite complete. But hark ye, Ransome,' he continued, addressing the sick man, who cowered beneath his scowling gaze like a beaten hound--'mind and keep a still tongue in that calf's head of yourn, or else prepare yourself to--to take--to take--what follows. You know me as well as I do you. Good-night.' With this caution, the fellow disappeared; and after a few words, which the unfortunate family were too frightened to listen to, or scarcely to hear, I also went my way.