They told him their story with anxious questions as to what he had heard. He had heard, of course, a great deal more than there was to hear, that Harry had come to blows with his father, that there had been a struggle and a fight, and that the young man had been kicked out of the house. Some added that he lay on the Fells all night, so much injured was he; and there were whispers of vice on Harry’s part as the cause of such a violent proceeding, which Selby was too wise to betray to the poor women. When they had told him all they knew, he sprang up to his feet and looked at his watch with an air of readiness and capability which at once gave them hope. “It is quite clear what must be done,” he said; “you must send somebody to Liverpool at once, this very night. It’s too late for the mid-day train, but the night one will do.” “Send somebody to Liverpool!” Joan’s countenance flushed again while her mother’s grew pale. “Oh!” cried Mrs. Joscelyn, “but who can we get to go?” while Joan, who had never been beyond Carlisle in her life, stood up unconsciously with such a gasp as catches the breath after a sudden plunge into the sea. She knew nothing about the world, and she belonged to a generation which believed that a woman could do nothing out of her own home; but a rush of blood came to her face, and of tremendous energy to her heart. In the suggestion there seemed so much hope, although almost as much fear. “Who will you get to go? Me if you like,” said Selby, with the benevolent glow of a man who feels himself a sort of good angel to women in trouble. “I have nothing very particular to do, and I have a pass on the railway, and I’m used to travelling. I will go to-night, and come back to-morrow night. You will hear sooner that way than any other way, and it is far easier to make inquiries personally than by letter--and far more satisfactory.” The colour left Joan’s cheek; there was a little falling back of relief, yet half disappointment, from the sudden alarmed temerity of impulse that had come upon her. She looked at him with, in the midst of her trouble, a faint--the very faintest--touch of a smile at one corner of her mouth. “Aha, my lad! I know what that is for!” Joan said to herself, swift as lightning; but even the interested motive thus revealed was not displeasing to her, and the whole suggestion went through her mind like an arrow on the wind, showing only for a second against the dark atmosphere of anxiety within.