As in most North countrymen, there was in the schoolmaster an ineradicable touch of superstition. He cursed the “unlucky” poem, and flinging the book from him ran to his favorite. As soon as Jan could speak, he gasped, “The woman that brought me to the mill!” But when Master Swift went to search the garden he could find no one. Remembering the former alarm, and that no one was to be seen then, Master Swift came to the conclusion that in each case it was a delusion. “Ye’re a dear good lad, Jan,” said he, “but ye’ve fagged yourself out. Take the dog with ye to-morrow for company, and your sketch-book, and amuse yourself. I’ll not expect ye at school. And get away to your bed now. I told Master Lake I shouldn’t let ye away to-night.” Jan went to bed, and next morning was up with the lark, and with Rufus at his heels went off to a distant place, where from a mound, where a smaller road crossed the highway to London, there was a view which he wished to sketch under an early light. As he drew near, he saw a small cart, at one side of which the horse was feeding, and at the foot of the mound sat a woman with a pedler’s basket. When Jan recognized her, it was too late to run away. And whither could he have run? The four white roads gleamed unsheltered over the plains; there was no place to hide in, and not a soul in sight. When the large-mouthed woman seized Jan in her arms, and kissing him cried aloud, “Here he is at last! My child, my long lost child!” the despair which sank into the poor boy’s heart made him speechless. Was it possible that this woman was his mother? His foster-mother’s words tolled like a knell in his ears,—“The woman that brought our Jan hither.” At the sound of Sal’s voice the hunchback appeared from behind the cart, and his wife dragged Jan towards him, crying, “Here’s our dear son! our pretty, clever little son.” “I bean’t your son!” cried poor Jan, desperately. “My mother’s dead.” For a moment the Cheap Jack’s wife seemed staggered; but unluckily Jan added, “She died last month,” and it was evident that he knew nothing of his real history. “Oh, them mill people, them false wretches!” screamed the woman. “Have I been a paying ’em for my precious child, all this time, for ’em to teach him to deny his own mother! The brutes!” Jan’s face and eyes blazed with passion. “How dare you abuse my good father and mother!” he cried. “_You_ be the wretch, and”—