'Oh, there wasn't no mistaking, and the van as she belonged to waited just outside the village, for I went down along with her and seed it, painted yeller with red wheels. I knowed Zoe was gypsy born, for she'd one of them charms round her neck as I didn't meddle with, for they do say as there's a deal of power in them things, and that gypsies can't be drownded or ketch fevers and things as long as they keeps 'em.' Mr Robins sat down in the chair opposite Mrs Gray; an odd, cold sort of apprehension was stealing over him, and the pleasant dream of home and Edith and Zoe, in which he had been living through the day, was fading away with every word the woman said. 'The funny part of it were that she vowed and declared as she put the child at your door, and never came this way at all; leastways, from what she said it must abeen your house, for she said it was hard by the church and had a thick hedge, and that there was a kind sorter body as she see there in the morning, as must abeen Mrs Sands, and nobody else from her account. She said she was in a heap of trouble just then, her husband ill and a deal more, and she was pretty nigh at her wits' end, and that, without thinking twice what she were about, she wropt the baby up and laid it close agin the door of the house where she'd seen the kind-looking body. She would have it as it was there, say what I would; but, maybe, poor soul, she were mazed, and hardly knew where she were. 'She went to your house to-day, and Mrs Sands were quite put out with her, being busy too, and expecting company, and thought it were just her impidence; but there! I knows what trouble is, and how it just mazes a body, for I could no more tell where I went nor what I did yesterday than that table there. And another queer thing is as she didn't know nothing about the name, and neither she nor her husband can't read or write noways, so she couldn't have wrote it down, and she 'd never heard tell of such a name as Zoe, and didn't like it neither. She'd always ameant it to be Rachel, as had been her mother's name before her, and her grandmother's too.' 'Are you quite certain she was the mother?' 'Certain? Why, you 'd only to see the two together to be sure of it. I'd not have let her go, not were it ever so, if it hadn't been as clear as daylight; and just now too, when I seems to want her for a bit of comfort.' And here Mrs Gray relapsed into her apron. Mr Robins sat for a minute looking at her in silence, and then got up, and without a word went out into the dark night, mechanically taking the way to his house, and then turning on to the high-road to Smithurst, tramping along through the mud and dead leaves with a dull, heavy persistence.