Step by step the weaver led her on to tell him the story of what had led up to the shameful transaction in the market-place. It was no mere curiosity that moved him, but a realisation that there could be no peace of mind for Mary Whittaker until she had found relief by unburdening her tortured soul. The weaver's gentle ways and tactful bearing were slowly winning her heart, and, painful though the recital of her past history was for her, Parfitt knew that it would bring relief. It was a long story that Mary had to tell. She had little art of narrative, and her endeavours to shield both her mother and stepfather as far as possible from blame impeded the flow of her words. Reduced to plain terms, her story ran as follows:-- Mary Whittaker was a girl of fourteen when her mother had married Samuel Learoyd. Of her father she knew nothing. He had died when she was a baby. From the first the Learoyds had proved an ill-matched pair. Anne Learoyd, her mother, had been brought up in Leeds, and having been used to all the excitements of life in a big town, found the solitary farm lonesome. Samuel Learoyd, though genial enough at times in the society of his male friends, was capricious. His temper was often sullen, and when in one of his gloomy moods he would spend the whole evening in his farm kitchen in morose silence. This state of mind was in part due to physical infirmity. As a child he had been subject to epileptic fits, and though these grew less frequent as he advanced to manhood, he never entirely shook them off, and during his married life a long spell of gloomy misanthropy would sometimes end in the return of one of these attacks. He was, too, a proud man, and his pride bred in him a morbid sensibility towards any slight, real or fanciful, that was practised on him. He treated his stepdaughter not unkindly, but never accepted any parental responsibility towards her.