These reflections had prepared her to hear in a proper spirit a quiet explanation of the whole transaction from the mouth of Mr. Longstaff himself; when, much to her private satisfaction, he returned home not long afterwards. That gentleman had already commanded a candle to be brought him, and was about to steer off to his chamber without exchanging a word, when some casual observation, dropped in an unexpectedly kind tone by his good lady, arrested his progress, and induced him to sit down in a chair about the same spot where he chanced to be standing. By and by he edged round to the fire; and, shortly afterwards, at her especial suggestion, he consented--much to his inward gratification--to take a little supper. This led to a kind of tacitly understood reconciliation; so that, eventually, the same subject which had caused so much difference in the afternoon, was again introduced and discussed in a manner truly dove-like and amiable. Mrs. Longstaff felt perfectly satisfied with the explanation given by her husband, that he had undertaken the negotiation with Mrs. Clink solely to oblige the squire; and that that infamous woman had attributed her disaster to him merely out of a spirit of annoyance and revenge, for which he expressed himself perfectly unable to account. But the steward's wife was gratified most to hear his threats of retaliation upon the little hero of our story and his mother. In these she joined with great cordiality, still farther urging him on to their immediate fulfilment, so that by the time he had taken his usual nightly allowance of punch, he found himself in particularly high condition, late as was the hour, for the instant execution of his cowardly and cruel enterprise. CHAPTER IV. _Mr. Longstaff gets fuddled, and revenges himself upon Mrs. Clink; together with some excellent discourse of his while in that pleasing condition. The mother of our hero partially discloses a secret which the reader has been anxious to know ever since he commenced this history._ While things were thus progressing elsewhere, the poor and destitute, though erring, creature, over whose head the rod of petty tyranny now hung so threateningly, had passed a solitary evening by the side of her small fire, unnoticed even by the neighbours humble as herself; for adversity, though it is said to make men friends, yet renders them selfish also, and leaves in their bosoms but few feelings of charity for others.