“Whatever ye must needs go and take up with that young Chiswick for I’m sure I don’t know,” whimpered she. “Ain’t there trouble enough a’ready? You did ought to ha’ knowed better—your father so set on agin them Chiswicks as ’e is! One’d think there weren’t no other chaps about! But, Lor’, ye can’t count on girls!” She had her arm round the slender waist and helped the drooping figure up the path. And in the kitchen she set her in a chair and wiped the blood from her forehead, and then took her up and put her to bed. It was done deftly enough, but all the time the same moan went on till the child was glad when the candle was taken away and she was left to her thoughts. For in her thoughts she could live over again the happy moments that were so near in the past ... and of the future she would not think. That was grim enough, for she guessed pretty surely that her home would give her nothing but what it had given her to-night, and Charley was gone: gone to some unknown spot in that vast and unknown London, that to Bess was as the wilderness itself. She had not put it too strongly when she had said that her fight would be a worse fight than another’s. It _was_ a bad fight, but it was a brave one. For a while there was a lull in the persecution; either sobriety brought shame for the brutal assault on his daughter, or the departure of young Chiswick from the village removed his excuse, but anyhow Farmer Benson quieted down to sullen moroseness within-doors, and to bitter attacks upon his neighbour without. Christmas came and went, and on Christmas Day Bess wore a face so bright that her mother looked at her wondering, and her father swore beneath his breath in sheer perplexity. The night before a red-haired little maid had run into the kitchen with eager eyes, and the girl’s heart had leapt into her mouth. Luckily there had been no one by, but Bess had snatched the child in her arms and carried her into the orchard, kicking and screaming at the indignity, ere she had dared to ask her for what she carried. It was a letter, addressed A. B., and was supposed to be for some person unknown. Bess took possession of it, in exchange for a good scolding for instructions of secret delivery not adhered to, and a bright penny for acid-drops. And then she ran away into the wood. The leaves were all off the trees, and lay rotting in the purple brushwood; a hard sky looked on a hard and frozen land, and there was a promise of snow in the air in place of the soughing of the wind in the watching forest on that night when every gust had borne a tale of love through the moonlight. But Bess knew nothing of wind or weather: Charley was beside her once more; his kisses made her heart beat again, and her face was hot in the frost as it lay, in her thought, against his. He was well, he loved her, he had never looked at another girl, he had got work at last, and he was coming back for her soon. And she kissed the letter as girls do, and cried over it in her joy.