There was a cold air, though it was a May night, but the child lay warm against him, and he remembered how its mother had said she could feel the likeness even in the dark, and he could not resist laying his cold finger on the warm little cheek under the shawl; and then, angry with himself for the throb that the touch sent to his heart, hastened his steps, and had soon reached the Grays' cottage and deposited his burden just inside the gate, where a few minutes after Gray found it. He could see Mrs Gray plainly as she sat at her work: a pleasant, motherly face; but he did not linger to look at it, but turned away and retraced his steps along the field path home. He found himself shivering as he went; the air seemed to have grown more chilly and penetrating without that warm burden against his heart, and the unaccustomed weight had made his arms tremble. Somehow the house looked dull and uncomfortable, though Jane Sands had come in and lighted the lamp, and was laying his supper. Up-stairs there was a hollow on his bed where something had lain, and by the side of the bed he found a baby's woollen shoe, which might have betrayed him to Jane if she had gone up-stairs. But though he put it out of sight directly, he felt sure that the whole matter was no secret from Jane, and that she had been an accomplice in the trick that had been played on him, and he smiled to himself at the thought of how he had outwitted her, and of how puzzled she must be to know what had become of the baby. He did his best to appear as tranquil and composed as usual, as if nothing had happened to disturb the ordinary current of his life, and he forced himself to make a few remarks on indifferent subjects when she came into the room. She had evidently been crying, and was altogether in a nervous and upset condition. She forgot half the things he wanted at supper, and her hand trembled so that she nearly overturned the lamp. More than once she stopped and looked at him as if she were nerving herself to speak, and he knew quite well the question that was trembling on her lips. 'Where is the child? Master, where is the child?' But he would not help her in any way, and he quite ignored the agitation that was only too evident; and even when he went into the kitchen to fetch his pipe, and found her with her face buried in her arms on the kitchen table, shaking with irrepressible sobs, he retreated softly into the passage and called to her to bring the pipe, and when, after a long delay, she brought it in, he was apparently absorbed in his paper, and took no notice of her tear-stained face and quivering lips. He heard her stirring far into the night, and once she went into the little room next his that used to be his daughter's, and which no one had used since she left, and in the silence of the night again he could hear heartbreaking sobs half-stifled.