"Missis!" he said, his bronzed cheeks taking on a deep blush. "There's a word I mun either say or burst--I cannot hold it longer! I been i' love wi' you ever sin I were a lad, and you a lass, and it grows waur and waur! Will you wed me?--for if you weern't missis, I mun go!" Jeckie looked at him, and knew the reality of what he had said. And for a moment she felt something remind her that she was a woman--but in the next she had steeled herself. "It's no good, lad!" she said softly. "No good! Put it away from you." Bartle turned white as his Sunday shirt, but he stood erect. "Then you mun let me go, missis, and at once," he said huskily. "I've saved money, and I'll go a long way off--to this here Canada 'at they talk about. But go I will!" He came to say good-bye to her three days later, and Jeckie put a hundred pounds in banknotes into his hand. It was the only deed of its sort that she ever wanted to do, but Bartle would have none of it. His eyes looked another appeal as he said his farewell, and Jeckie shook her head and let him go. And so he went, white-faced and dry-eyed, and with him went the last chance of redemption that Jeckie Farnish ever had. She had sold herself by then, body and soul, to Mammon. CHAPTER XIII _Dead Men's Shoes_ Had George Grice but known it, the defection of his daughter-in-law, Lucilla, to the rival establishment across the street had more in it than appeared on the surface. Lucilla, after much worry and anxious thought, had come to the conclusion that there was no more to be got out of Albert's father. She had grown doubtful, not very long after her marriage, about the old man's financial position. George, when the bride and bridegroom had fairly settled down, had begun to throw out hints that her portion--two thousand pounds good money--ought to be sunk in the business, and when she had objected, saying that she preferred to control it herself, had grown grumpy and sullen. Then there had been difficulties about paying Albert out of the business when the dissension took place. George had put every obstacle possible in the way, and had delayed settlement until he was forced to it. Finally, he had forbidden Albert and Lucilla to darken his doors again, and the break-up of family ties had seemed complete. But, Lucilla had kept her eyes and ears open, and had seen and heard how the old man's business fell off; and, getting a purely feminine intuition that George was going steadily downhill and only keeping open out of sheer obstinacy and pride, she formed the opinion that he was by no means as well-off as was fancied, and, therefore, worth no more consideration. Hence the grocery book went no more to Grice but to Farnish. It was a final sign of complete separation, wholly due to Lucilla, who, in addition to other things, was actuated not a little by womanish spite and malice. George had told her a few plain truths to her face when the rift opened, and she had no