On one side of the door, at Dawson’s Buildings, was Mr. Randle’s shop; and on the other was Mr. Randle’s little dining parlor. In this room Mrs. Peckover left Mat, while she went up stairs to see if her sick brother wanted anything. Finding that he was still quietly sleeping, she only waited to arrange the bed-clothes comfortably about him, and to put a hand-bell easily within his reach in case he should awake, and then went down stairs again immediately. She found Mat sitting with his elbows on the one little table in the dining-parlor, his head resting on his hands. Upon the table lying by the side of the Bracelet, was the lock of hair out of Jane Holdsworth’s letter, which he had yet once more taken from his pocket to look at. “Why, mercy on me!” cried Mrs. Peckover, glancing at it, “surely it’s the same hair that’s worked into the Bracelet! Wherever, for goodness sake, did you get that?” “Never mind where I got it. Do you know whose hair it is? Look a little closer. The man this hair belonged to was the man she trusted in--and he laid her in the churchyard for her pains.” “Oh! who was he? who was he?” asked Mrs. Peckover, eagerly “Who was he?” repeated Matthew, sternly. “What do you mean by asking me that?” “I only mean that I never heard a word about the villain--I don’t so much as know his name.” “You don’t?” He fastened his eyes suspiciously on her as he said those two words. “No; as true as I stand here I don’t. Why, I didn’t even know that your poor dear sister’s name was Grice till you told me.” His look of suspicion began to change to a look of amazement as he heard this. He hurriedly gathered up the Bracelet and the lock of hair, and put them into his pocket again. “Let’s hear first how you met with her,” he said. “I’ll have a word or two about the other matter afterwards.” Mrs. Peckover sat down near him, and began to relate the mournful story which she had told to Valentine, and Doctor and Mrs. Joyce, now many years ago, in the Rectory dining-room. But on this occasion she was not allowed to go through her narrative uninterruptedly. While she was speaking the few simple words which told how she had sat down by the road-side, and suckled the half-starved infant of the forsaken and dying Mary Grice, Mat suddenly reached out his heavy, trembling hand, and took fast hold of hers. He griped it with such force that, stout-hearted and hardy as she was, she cried out in alarm and pain, “Oh, don’t! you hurt me--you hurt me!” He dropped her hand directly, and turned his face away from her; his breath quickening painfully, his fingers fastening on the side of his chair, as if some great pang of oppression were trying him to the quick. She rose and asked anxiously what ailed him; but, even as the words passed her lips, he mastered himself with that iron resolution of his which few trials could bend, and none break, and motioned to her to sit down again.