"One," he said. "Two!" and his hand dropped at his side with his weapon in it, for at the door stood his mother. In an instant she had fallen upon her knees and dragged herself toward him and was clinging to his hand. "No--Jem!" she panted. "No, not that, my dear--God forbid!" He staggered back though she still clung to him. "How," he faltered,--"how did you come here?" "The Lord led me," she sobbed. "He put it into my heart and showed me the way, an' you had forgot the door, Jem--thank God!" "You--saw--what I was going to do?" "What you _was_ goin' to do, but what you'll never do, Jem, an' me to live an' suffer when it's done--me as you've been so good an' such a comfort to." In the dim light she knelt sobbing at his feet. "Let me sit down," he said. "And sit down nigh me. I've summat to tell you." But though he sank into the chair she would not get up, but kept her place in spite of him and went on. "To-day there have been black tales told you?" he said. "Yes," she cried, "but----" "They're true," he said, "th' worst on 'em." "No--no!" He stopped her by going on monotonously as if she had not spoken. "Think of the worst you've ever known--you've not known much--and then say to yourself, 'He's worse a hundred times'; think of the blackest you have ever known to be done, and then say to yourself, 'What he's done's blacker yet.' If any chap has told you I've stood at naught until there was next to naught I'd left undone, he spoke true. If there was any one told you I set th' decent ones by the ears and laughed 'em in the face, he spoke true. If any o' 'em said I was a dread and a byword, they spoke true, too. The night you came there were men and women in th' house that couldn't look you in th' face, and that felt shame for th' first time in their lives--mayhap--because you didn't know what they were, an' took 'em to be as innocent as yourself. There's not a sin I haven't tasted, nor a wrong I've not done. I've had murder in my mind, an' planned it. I've been mad for a woman not worth even what Jem Haworth had to give her--and I've won all I'd swore I'd win--an' lost it! Now tell me if there's aught else to do but what I've set my mind on?" She clung to his heavy hand as she had not clung to it before, and laid her withered cheek upon it and kissed it. Bruised and crushed as she was with the blows he had dealt, she would not let it go free yet. Her words came from her lips a broken cry, with piteous sobs between them. But she had her answer ready.