Though Dame Hursey knew all the short cuts, it was more than an hour’s walk from her house to the top of Mount Harry, but the old woman was longing to see her son again, so she started in good time, and reached the spot a quarter of an hour before he did, though he was punctual. The fog was rolling up again, as the old wool-gatherer had predicted, and, accustomed as her black eyes were to piercing the mists which so often wrap those rounded hills like a damp clinging garment, her son was close upon her before she saw his form, looming like a gigantic grey figure close beside her. It was twelve years and a half since they had met, and George Hursey was very much altered in appearance since, in the character of John Smith, carpenter on board the French yacht Hirondelle, he had laid the baron’s little daughter on John Shelley’s doorstep; but for all that his mother declared she would have recognised him in a crowd. “You’ll come home and have a cup of tea and a chat, George, after all these years, won’t you?” said the old dame, gazing with pride and affection on her ne’er-do-well son. “No, mother, no; I might be recognised, and I don’t want to be arrested for making off with a child, before I go back to my own wife and children.” “The child is safe enough, if you mean the child you left on John Shelley’s doorstep thirteen years ago come next June.” George Hursey gave a sigh of relief, for many a nightmare had that innocent baby, which, for aught he knew to the contrary, might have perished from cold or exposure through his fault, given him. “John Shelley took it in then, as I thought he would?” “Yes, and a beauty she is, and no mistake. George, tell me who the child is, will you, honey?” said Dame Hursey, in a wheedling tone. “That’s what I have come here for chiefly, that and to see you once again, for when I say good-bye to England to-morrow it will be for good this time; I am going to give up the sea, and live at home now.” “Well, you know your own affairs best; but about the lassie, George; whose child is she? No poor person’s, I’ll be bound,” said Dame Hursey, whose curiosity about Fairy exceeded even her interest in her son’s family affairs. “She is the niece of my late master, a French gentleman, and it was by his wish I took her to John Shelley, only instead of going in as I pretended I had done, I left her on the doorstep, and went off with the purse; and if ever I cursed in my life I have cursed that money, which, for aught I knew till a few minutes ago, had made me a murderer, though for that matter I may be one still, for the baroness may have fretted herself into her grave for her baby.”