"I had some slight store of money of my own. I spent it wandering the country, seeking trace of my lost one. But she had vanished as completely as if the earth had swallowed her. I left England, and travelled abroad. One day, I saw in the _Times_ the announcement of my mother's death. I hastened home. She had made a will leaving me a small annuity for my life--the bulk of her fortune to that accursed tutor. "My first impulse was to reject the legacy. But other counsels prevailed. I found in time this wild and lone retreat, and here I have waited for death, for I have neither lived nor cared to live. That box contains my horde. Take it to your father's keeping. I charge you to find my wife and child, if child there be. The money is for them. If you cannot find them in three years from now take it for yourself, Abel, and may God's blessing be with it and you." The old man, old not in years but old from privation, neglect, and mental suffering, sank back upon his pillow, and seemed to swoon away. I felt in a sore quandary. Here was I, alone in this remote cottage, with a man to all seeming at death's door, little or no food in the house, no medicines or restoratives, and, to complicate matters, a box containing as my hasty rummage in it had disclosed, notes and gold of considerable value. Like most young people I had practically no knowledge of the treatment of the sick and I had an unreasoning terror of death. I knew enough, however, to feel sure that food and warmth and physic must be had and had at once. I made up a peat fire in the rusty range--the chimney smoked atrociously at first, but anon the damp was drawn out, and the fire glowed red and warm. I found some milk in a tin below stairs, which I judged had been left by some neighbouring farmer's lass. I warmed it in a pan, and succeeded in getting my patient to swallow a few spoonfuls. I piled on to the bed all the covering I could find. I took from the store a spade guinea, carefully locked and stowed away beneath the bed that precious kist, and then, assuring, or trying to assure, the half-conscious sufferer that I wouldn't be long gone, I hied me away across the moors to the "Floating Light." There I purchased a bottle of brandy and such provisions as I thought most likely to be useful, and bribed a man I found drinking in the kitchen to make what speed he could down to Slaithwaite and bring back with him, at any cost, old William Dean, the doctor who had brought me and our Ruth into the world, and who cared the bodies of all the Colne Valley from Marsden to Milnsbridge Then, pretty heavily laden, or rather cumbered than laden, I set off once more for the hermit's cottage.