"I'll go," said Reed, who began to see the Major really did not know anything of Cathy--and it had not been very probable that he did. "But I'd like to leave a word behind me. You have succeeded in doing me a great injury, Major Parrifer. You are rich and powerful, I am poor and lowly. You set your mind on my bit of a home, and because you could not drive me from it, you took advantage of your magistrate's post to sentence me to prison, and so be revenged. It has done me a great deal of harm. What good has it done you?" Major Parrifer could not speak for rage. "It will come home to you, sir, mark me if it does not. God has seen my trouble, and my wife's trouble, and I don't believe He ever let such a wrong pass unrewarded. _It will come home to you, Major Parrifer._" George Reed went out, quietly shutting the hall-door behind him, and walked home through the thick flakes of snow that had begun to fall. V. COMING HOME TO HIM. The year was getting on. Summer fruits were ripening. It had been a warm spring, and hot weather was upon us early. One fine Sunday morning, George Reed came out of his cottage and turned up Piefinch Lane. His little girls were with him, one in either hand, in their clean cotton frocks and pinafores and straw hats. People had gone into church, and the bells had ceased. Reed had not been constant in attendance since the misfortune in the winter, when Major Parrifer put him into prison. The month's imprisonment had altered him; his daughter Cathy's mysterious absence had altered him more; he seemed unwilling to face people, and any trifle was made an excuse to himself for keeping away from service. To-day it was afforded by the baby's illness. Reed said to his wife that he would take the little girls out a bit to keep the place quiet. Rumours were abroad that he had heard once from Cathy; that she told him she should come back some day and surprise him and the neighbours, that she was "all right, and he had no call to fret after her." Whether this was true or pure fiction, Reed did not say: he was a closer man than he used to be. Lifting the children over a stile in Piefinch Lane, just beyond his garden, Reed strolled along the by-path of the field. It brought him to the high hedge skirting the premises of Major Parrifer. The man had taken it by chance, because it was a quiet walk. He was passing along slowly, the children running about the field, on which the second crop of grass was beginning to grow, when voices on the other side of the hedge struck on his ear. Reed quietly put some of the foliage aside, and looked through; just as Major Parrifer had looked through the hedge in Piefinch Lane at him, that Sunday morning some few months before.