Without another word, he went to the ferryboat, unfastened the chain, and held out his hand to assist Jane in. She thrust his hand aside with a gesture of impatience, and stepped in with firm foot, then turned and helped her daughter. Nothing was said as the man rowed across. The woman was immersed in thought of the most gloomy complexion; the daughter was too wretched to speak. The tears that flowed from her eyes were mingled with the rain that beat on her face. The rower looked from one to the other with a sinister expression. After the boat had grounded, when Mrs. Marley left it, he said, 'You'll not go away――right away, I mean――without letting me know where you may be; because it might chance――there's no telling――there is hope yet.' He did not complete his sentence. 'There is no hope,' said the woman coldly, 'no more than there is sun above these clouds and this dribbling rain. The sun has gone down. After nineteen years hope dies.' Then she left him, and extending her arm, again grasped the wrist of her daughter. 'Mother,' said Winefred, 'Mr. Dench hates us.' 'It matters nothing to us whether he hate or love. Why should he hate us?' 'That I cannot say, but hate us he does.' 'All the world hates us, for all the world has money, comforts, shelter, and,' she muttered in her bosom, 'there are some who have a husband to care for them, and a father to watch over them. We have neither, and the sight of us, as we are, in our need, our nakedness, our desolation, is an offence, like garbage, to be swept aside and cast on the dunghill. Seaton says, Away, across the water! you do not belong to us. And Axmouth says, Away! you were not born here, and we are not responsible for you. Let us warm our feet at a sea-coal fire, and drink mulled ale, and turn into our downy beds――go you wanderers in night and cold and wet――die, but do not trouble us.' Up the steep path that led through the crease in the hillside pushed the weary mother, drawing along her yet more weary child. Yet in the passion of her heart at the contrast her imagination drew she pressed forward fast till arrested by shortness of breath. Thus in silence they continued to mount. It was a climb of four hundred feet. The woman looked neither to right nor to left. Wet, trailing brambles caught at her garments with their claws. As she passed under a stunted thorn it shuddered and sent down a shower. The flints in the way lay in beds of water; the grass was slippery with rain. Dank and rotting sting-nettles, oozy, but poisonous in their decay, struck at their knees as they mounted. 'O mother,' sobbed the girl, when the summit was attained, and the cruel east wind slashed in their faces, splashing them with ice-cold rain, 'O mother, I can go no farther.' 'How――where can we stay? Answer me that.' 'Why should we go on if we go nowheres?' 'No――we go nowhere, for we have nowhere to go to for shelter and food.' 'Let us go home.' 'The sea has taken it from us.'