So things went on for sixteen years, when she was at last able to leave the village and take service in a neighbouring town, and cease to be reminded of the man's existence. One evening, two years after, there was a knock at the back door, and when she went to it there he was. His wife had been dead six months; he was very lonely and unhappy; he had never really loved anyone but Martha, and would she marry him now? Partly from the suddenness of the shock; partly from a feeling that here was the finger of Fate; not a little from pleasurable excitement and pride to think of the power she exerted; and partly, in her own words, because "it seemed more natural like to die a married woman," she consented. "The thought," to quote her again, "of his coming back after all those years and saying he had never wanted anybody else took my breath away, and made it impossible to say no." Anyway, they were married, only for her at once to discover that her husband was a secret drinker of the worst kind, and had been so for years. He made no disguise of it to her, and even told her that his first wife had helped to keep it dark by locking him in the house till the orgy was over and then thrashing him with his own leather belt--a feat to which Martha refers in envious admiration, for she is a little meek woman. She had no power to cope with the situation, and her husband became worse. The secret was a secret no longer; he lost his work, and, during a period of distress, died of pneumonia three years after his second marriage. Martha, who was now a woman of over fifty, went back to service and became housekeeper to a country clergyman, an old bachelor, where for two weeks she was in transports of delight, only to be plunged in misery and anxiety by the discovery that her new master also was a drunkard, and that the real reason of her engagement to him was to assist in keeping this fact from the parish. This, with the assistance of a curate, she did her best to accomplish; the poor old gentleman during his periodical outbreaks was confined as much as possible to one room. Again and again she made up her mind to run away, but she was restrained, partly by pity for her employer, who, when not in his cups, was the sweetest of characters, and partly from the knowledge that her age was a bad one for re-engagement. The clergyman, who knew all about his unfortunate malady, further enlisted her sympathies by telling her that it was after his wife's death that he had begun to give way.