The way this was put an end to, I well remember. An old woman came into the field where I lay hid, to drive home a cow. I had had my eyes on this cow for at least an hour, having made up my mind to milk it for my own benefit as soon as the dusk fell. In my disappointment at seeing it driven off, and also out of a desire to learn whether the old dame might not be going to milk it in a corner of the pasture, in which case I might still get an after taste, I crawled so far out of my hole that, turning suddenly, she caught sight of me. I expected to see her hurry off, but she did not. She took a long look, and then came back toward me, making, however, as it seemed to me, as if she did not see me. When she had come within a few feet of me, she looked down abruptly, and our eyes met. What she saw in mine I can only guess. In hers I read a divine pity. "Oh, poor lad!" she murmured; "oh, you poor, poor lad!" and there were tears in her voice. I was so weak--it was almost twenty-four hours since I had tasted food, and I had come twenty-four miles in the time--that at that I broke down, and cried like a child. I learned later that the old woman took me for just the same person for whom the Bailiff at St. Albans had mistaken me, a young apprentice named Hunter, who had got into trouble about religion, and was at this time hiding up and down the country; Bishop Bonner having clapped his father into jail until the son should come to hand. But her kind heart knew no distinction of creeds. She took me to her cottage as soon as night fell, and warmed, and dried, and fed me. She did not dare to keep me under her roof for longer than an hour or two, neither would I have stayed to endanger her. But she sent me out a new man, with a crust, moreover, in my pocket. A hundred times between Tottenham and Aldersgate I said "God bless her!" And I say so now. So twice in one day, and that the gloomiest day of my life, I was succored by a woman. I have never forgotten it. I have tried to keep it always in mind; remembering too a saying of my uncle's, that "there is nothing on earth so merciful as a good woman, or so pitiless as a bad one!" CHAPTER V. MISTRESS BERTRAM. "Ding! ding! ding! Aid ye the poor! Pray for the dead! Five o'clock and a murky morning."