'For eighteen years,' she said, with her eyes on the fire, and speaking rather to herself than to the man, 'for eighteen years Winefred has lain at my heart. I fed her from my bosom. When she cried, all the fibres of my being trembled. From me she has the very blood that flows in her veins, and her soul is a part of mine, and her first breath she drew out of my lungs. I have done everything for her. I love nothing, care for nothing, hope for nothing apart from her. I have nothing but my child――no, not a clot of earth, not a brick out of a wall, not a guinea of gold; I have nothing my own but her.' She began to cry, not noisily, but with great tears stealing down her cheeks. Then she was silent. All at once she burst forth, 'O God in heaven, Who has put such love into a mother's heart, Thou alone canst understand me. What if aught should befall me, and she were left alone? She is a handsome girl. I was handsome once, and having no father, no mother to care for me, I came into such sorrow as never was. I cannot endure to think that she――my Winefred, my all――should be kicked about from place to place, friendless, or taken up by such as would only blight her whole life. I had rather that she died.' She sprang up and her eye flashed. 'Rather than this I would do it again. I _will_ do it again, and not let the evil soil and rot my pretty flower.' 'Be still, good woman,' said Job, and he spoke with a gulp in his throat. He took up his violin, and played the same air as before. Presently he laid the instrument on his knees. 'I understand you. You speak as I feel about my Jack. I am a rough old sea-dog, and I have been――I won't say what. But all I have saved is for my Jack. I shall make a gentleman of him. All my thoughts are on my Jack.' He touched his breast with the end of his bow. 'When you talk like that, Jane, you touch a chord here as begins to chime. You and your kid shall remain here. I am getting old, and require a woman to mind the house. As to the pay――we will talk of that to-morrow.' She caught his hand and kissed it. 'Nay,' said he, 'don't thank me. It is the fellow-feeling as does it. I am a father with one child, and you a mother also with one――that is it, woman, that is it.' CHAPTER IV THE UNDERCLIFF The rain and easterly wind ceased towards dawn. When morning broke a haze hung over sea and land that slowly lifted but never wholly vanished, and left the landscape bathed in the wan sunshine of November, the smile of a dying year. Jane Marley was afoot early, and went to work immediately. She did what was necessary undirected, lighted the fire, made the kettle boil, and had cleared away the untidy remains of the past day's occupation of the room. When Job Rattenbury came down from his room above and found every preparation made for breakfast, then an expression of satisfaction came over his rugged face.