"'No,' says he, 'not a step,' says he. 'If she's dead,' says he, 'we'll only know it a day the sooner, and if she's in life, it'll be a disgrace to us the longest day we live.'"

"Aw, bolla veen, bolla veen!" said Nancy. "When some men is getting religion there's no more inside at them than a gutted herring, and they're good for nothing but to put up in the chimley to smook."

"It's Black Tom, woman," said Grannie. "Caesar's freckened mortal of the man's tongue going. 'It's water to his wheel,' he's saying. 'He'll be telling me to set my own house in order, and me a local preacher, too.'

But how's the man himself?"

"Pete?" said Nancy. "Aw, tired enough last night, and not down yet....

Hush!... It's his foot on the loft."

"Poor boy! poor boy!" said Grannie.

The child cried, and then somebody began to beat the floor to the measure of a long-drawn hymn. Grannie must have been sitting before the fire with the baby across her knees.

"Something has happened," thought Pete as he drew on his clothes. A moment later something had happened indeed. He had opened a drawer of the dressing-table and found the wedding-ring and the earrings where Kate had left them. There was a commotion in the room below by this time, but Pete did not hear it. He was crying in his heart. "It is coming! I know it! I feel it! G.o.d help me! Lord forgive me! Amen! Amen!"

Caesar, the postman, and the constable, as a deputation from "The Christians," had just entered the house. Black Tom was with them. He was the ferret that had fetched them out of their holes.

"Get thee home, woman," said Caesar to Grannie, "This is no place for thee. It is the abode of sin and deception."

"It's the home of my child's child, and that's enough for me," said Grannie.

"Get thee back, I tell thee," said Caesar, "and come thee to this house of shame no more."

"Take her, Nancy," said Grannie, giving up the child. "Shame enough, indeed, I'm thinking, when a woman has to shut her heart to her own flesh and blood if she's not to disrespect her husband," and she went off, weeping.

But Caesar's emotions were walled in by his pietistical views. "Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or land, for My name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold," said Caesar, with a cast of his eye towards Black Tom.

"Well, if I ever!" said Nancy. "The husband that wanted the like of that from me now.... A hundredfold, indeed! No, not for a hundred hundredfolds, the nasty dirt."

"Don't he turning up your nose, woman, but call your master," said Caesar.

"It's more than some ones need do, then, and I won't call my master, neither--no, thank you," said Nancy.

"I've something to tell him, and I've come, too, for to do it," said Caesar.

"The devil came farther than ever you did, and it was only a lie he was bringing for all that," said Nancy.

"Hould your tongue, Nancy Cain," said Caesar, "and take that Popish thing off the child's head." It was the scarlet hood.

"Pity the money that's wasted on the like wasn't given to the poor."

"I've heard something the same before, Caesar Cregeen," said Nancy. "It was Judas Iscariot was saying it first, and you're just thieving it from a thief."

"Chut!" cried Caesar, goaded by the laughter of Black Tom. "I'll call the man myself. Peter Quilliam!" and he made for the staircase door.

"Stand back," cried Nancy, holding the child like a pillow over one of her arms, and lifting the other threateningly.

"Aw, you'll never be raising your hand to the man of G.o.d, woman,"

giggled Black Tom.

"Won't I, though?" said Nancy grimly, "or the man of the devil either,"

she added, flashing at himself.

"The woman's not to trust, sir," snuffled the constable. "She's only an infidel, anyway. I've heard tell of her saying she didn't believe the whale swallowed Jonah."

"That's the diff'rance between us, then," said Nancy; "for there's some of you Manx ones would believe if Jonah swallowed the whale."

The staircase door opened at the back of Nancy, and Pete stepped into the room. "What's this, friends?" he asked, in a careworn voice.

Caesar stepped forward with a yellow envelope in his hand. "What's _that_, sir?" he answered.

Pete took the envelope and opened it.

"That's your letter back to you through the dead letter office, isn't it?" said Caesar.

"Well?" said Pete.

"There's n.o.body of that name in that place, is there!" said Caesar.

"Well?" said Pete again.

"Letters from England don't come through Peel, but your first letter had the Peel postmark, hadn't it?"

"Well?"

"Parcels from England don't come through Port St. Mary, but your parcel was stamped in Port St. Mary, wasn't it?"

"Anything else?"

"The handwriting inside the letter wasn't your own handwriting, was it?

The address on the outside of the parcel wasn't your own address--no?"

"Is that all?"

"Enough to be going on, I'm thinking."

"What about Uncle Joe?" said Black Tom, with another giggle.

"Your mistress is not in Liverpool. You don't know where she is. She has gone the way of all sinners," said Caesar.

"Is that what you're coming to tell me?" said Pete.

"No; we're coming to tell you," said Caesar, "that, as a notorious loose liver, we must be putting her out of cla.s.s. And we're coming to call on yourself to look to your own salvation. You've deceaved us, Mr.

Quilliam. You've grieved the Spirit of the Lord," with another "glime" in the direction of Black Tom; "you've brought contempt on the fellowship that counts you for one of the fold. You've given the light of your countenance to the path of an evildoer, and you've brought down the head of a child of G.o.d with sorrow to the grave."

Caesar was moved by his self-satisfied piety, and began to make' noises in his nostrils. "Let us lay the case before the Lord," he said; and he went down on his knees and prayed--

"Our brother has deceived us, O Lord, but we forgive him freely. Forgive Thou also his trespa.s.ses, so that at the last he escape h.e.l.l-fire. Count not Thy handmaid for a daughter of Belial, wherever she is this day. May it be good for her to be cut off from the body of the righteous. Grant that she feel this mercy in her carnal body before her eternal soul be called to everlasting judgment. Lord, strengthen Thy servant. Let not his natural affections be as the snare of the fowler unto his feet.

Though it grieve him sore, even to tears and tribulation, help him to pluck out the gourd that groweth in his own bosom----"