"I'll mak' him hear if he's shut hissen i' here," he cried. "Th' shifty villain's got ivvery shillin' o' brass I've been savin' for my little wench for th' last ten year. I'll ha' it back, if it's to be gotten." "Tha'lt ne'er see it again," shouted a voice in the crowd. "Tha'dst better ha' stuck to th' owd stockin', lad." Then the uproar began. One luckless depositor after another was added to the crowd. They might easily be known among the rest by their pale faces. Some of them were stunned into silence, but the greater portion of them were loud and passionate in their outcry. A few women hung on the outskirts, wiping their eyes every now and then with their aprons, and sometimes bursting into audible fits of weeping. "I've been goin' out charrin' for four year," said one, "to buy silks an' satins fur th' gentry. Yo' nivver seed _her_ i' owt else." And all knew whom she meant, and joined in shouts of rage. Sometimes it was Ffrench against whom their anger was most violent--Ffrench, who had been born among them a gentleman, and who should have been gentleman enough not to plunder and deceive them. And again it was Haworth--Haworth, who had lived as hard as any of them and knew what their poverty was, and should have done fairly by them, if ever man should. In the course of the afternoon Murdoch, gathering no news of Haworth elsewhere, went to his house. A panic-stricken servant let him in and led him into the great room where he had spent his first evening, long ago. Despite its splendor, it looked empty and lifeless, but when he entered, there rose from a carved and satin upholstered chair in one corner a little old figure in a black dress--Jem Haworth's mother, who came to him with a white but calm face. "Sir," were her greeting words, "where is he?" "I came to see him," he answered, "I thought----" "No," she interrupted, "he is not here. He has not been here since morning." She began to tremble, but she shed no tears. "There's been a good many to ask for him," she went on. "Gentlemen, an' them as was rough, an' didn't mind me bein' a woman an' old. They were harder than you'd think, an'--troubled as I've been, I was glad he was not here to see 'em. But I'd be more comfortable if I could rightly understand." "I can only tell you what I know," he said. "It isn't much. I have only gathered it from people on the streets." He led her back to her chair, and did not loosen his light grasp on her hand while he told her the story as he had heard it. His own mood was so subdued that it was easier than he had thought to use words which would lighten the first weight of the blow. She asked no questions after his explanation was over. "He's a poor man," she said at last,--"a poor man, but--we was poor before." Suddenly her tears burst forth. "They've said hard things to me to-day," she cried. "I don't believe 'em, Jem, my dear--now less than ever."