And the miller strode back into the inner room, whilst his wife sat upon a sack of barley, wringing her hands, and moaning, “I couldn’t do my duty by un, maester, I couldn’t do my duty by un.” This she repeated at intervals, with her apron over her face, as before; and then, suddenly aware that her husband had left her, she hurried into the inner room to plead her own cause. It was too late. The strangers had gone. The miller was not there, and the baby lay on the end of the press bedstead, wailing as bitterly as the mother herself. It had been placed there, with a big bundle of clothes by it, before the miller came back, and he had found it so. He found the stranger too, with his hat on his head, and his cloak fastened, glancing from time to time at the child, and then withdrawing his glance hastily, and looking forcedly round at the meagre furnishing of the miller’s room, and then back at the little bundle on the bed, and away again. The woman stood with her back to the press-bed, her striped shawl drawn tightly round her, and her hands folded together as closely as her long lip pressed the heavy one below. “Is it settled?” asked the man. “It is, sir,” said the miller. “You’ll excuse my missus being as she is, but it’s fretting for the child we’ve a lost”— “I understand, I understand,” said the stranger, hastily. He was pulling back the rings of a silk netted purse, which he had drawn mechanically from his pocket, and which, from some sudden start of his, fell chinking on to the floor. Whatever the thought was which startled him, he thought it so sharply that he looked up in fear that he had said it aloud. But he had not spoken, and the miller had no other expression than that of an eager satisfaction on his face as the stranger counted out the gold by the flaring light of the tallow candle. “A quarter’s pay in advance,” he said briefly. “It will be paid quarterly, you understand.” After which, and checking himself in a look towards the child, he went out, followed by the woman. In the round-house he paused however, and looked back into the meagre, dimly lighted room, where the little bundle upon the bed lay weeping. For a moment, a storm of irresolution seemed to seize him, and then muttering, “It can’t be helped for the present, it can’t be helped,” he hurried towards the vehicle, in the back seat of which the woman was already seated. The driver touched his hat to him as he approached, and turned the cushion, which he had been protecting from the rain. The stranger stumbled over the cloak as he got in, and, cursing the step, bade the man drive like something which had no connection with driving. But, as they turned, the windmiller ran out and after them. “Stop, sir!” he cried. “Well, what now?” said the stranger, sharply, as the horse was pulled back on his haunches. “Is it named?” gasped the miller. “Oh, yes, all that sort of thing,” was the impatient reply. “And what name?” asked the miller.