Pete had not awakened until late that morning. While still in bed he had heard Grannie and Nancy in the room below. The first sound of their voices told him that something was amiss.

“Aw, God bless me, God bless me!” said Nancy, as though with uplifted hands.

“It was Kelly the postman,” said Grannie in a doleful tone—the tone in which she had spoken between the puffs of her pipe.

“The dirt!” said Nancy.

“He was up at CÆsar's before breakfast this morning,” said Grannie.

“There now!” cried Nancy. “There's men like that, though. Just aiger for mischief. It's sweeter than all their prayers to them.... But where can she be, then? Has she made away with herself, poor thing?”

“That's what I was asking CÆsar,” said Grannie. “If she's gone with the young Ballawhaine, what for aren't you going to England over and fetching her home?” says I.

“And what did CÆsar say?”

“'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. “CÆsar'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! God help me! Lord forgive me! Amen! Amen!”

CÆsar, 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 CÆsar 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 CÆsar, “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 CÆsar'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 CÆsar, 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 CÆsar.

“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 CÆsar.

“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 CÆsar, “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, CÆsar Cregeen,” said Nancy. “It was Judas Iscariot was saying it first, and you're just thieving it from a thief.”

“Chut!” cried CÆsar, 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 God, 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.

CÆsar 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 CÆsar.

“Well?” said Pete.

“There's nobody of that name in that place, is there!” said CÆsar.

“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 CÆsar.

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

“No; we're coming to tell you,” said CÆsar, “that, as a notorious loose liver, we must be putting her out of class. 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 God with sorrow to the grave.”

CÆsar 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 trespasses, so that at the last he escape hell-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——”

“Dear heart alive!” cried Nancy, clattering her clogs, “it's a wonder in the world the man isn't thinking shame to blacken his own daughter before the Almighty Himself.”

“Be merciful, O Lord,” continued CÆsar, “to all rank unbelievers, and such as live in heathen darkness in a Christian land, and don't know Saturday from Sunday, and are imper-ent uncommon and bad with the tongue——”

“Stop that now.” cried Nancy, “that's meant for me.”

Pete had stood through this in silence, but with an angry, miserable face.

“Beg pardon all,” he said. “I'm not going for denying to what you say. I'm like the fish at the heel of the trawl-boat—the net's closing in on me and I'm caught. The game's up. I did deceave you. I did write those letters myself. I've no Uncle Joe, nor no Auntie Joney neither. My wife's left me. I'm not knowing where she is, or what's becoming of her. I'm done, and I'm for throwing up the sponge.”

There were grunts of satisfaction. “But don't you feel the need of pardon, brother,” said CÆsar.

“I don't,” said Pete. “What I was doing I was doing for the best, and, if I was doing wrong, the Almighty will have to forgive me—that's about all.”

CÆsar shot out his lip. Pete raised himself to his full height and looked from face to face, until his eyes settled on the postman.

“But it takes a thief to catch a thief,” he said. “Which of you was the thief that catcht me? Maybe I've been only a blundering blockhead, and perhaps you've been clever, and smart uncommon, but I'm thinking there's some of you hasn't been rocked enough for all that.”

He held out the yellow envelope. “This letter was sealed when you gave it to me, Mr. Cregeen—how did you know what was inside of it? 'On Her Majesty's Sarvice,' you say. But it isn't dead letters only that's coming with words same as that.”

The postman was meddling with his front hair.

“The Lord has His own wayses of doing His work, has He, CÆsar? I never heard tell, though, that opening other people's letters was one of them.”

Mr. Kelly's ferret eyes were nearly twinkling themselves out.

Pete threw letter and envelope into the fire. “You've come to tell me you're going to turn my wife out of class. All right! You can turn me out, too, and if the money I gave you is anywhere handy, you can turn that out at the same time and make a clane job.”

Black Tom was doubling with suppressed laughter at the corner of the dresser, and CÆsar was writhing under his searching glances.

“You're knowing a dale about the ould Book and I'm not knowing much,” said Pete, “but isn't it saying somewhere, 'Let him that's without sin amongst you chuck the first stone?' I'm not worth mentioning for a saint myself, so I lave it with you.”

His voice began to break. “You're thinking a dale about the broken law seemingly, but I'm thinking more about the broken heart. There's the like in somewhere, you go bail. The woman that's gone may have done wrong—I'm not saying she didn't, poor thing; but if she comes home again, you may turn her out, but I'll take her back, whatever she is and whatever she's done—so help me God I will—and I'll not wait for the Day of Judgment to ask the Almighty if I'm doing right.”

Then he sat down with his back to them on a chair before the fire.

“Now you can go home to nurse,” said Nancy, wiping her eyes, “and lave me to sweeten the kitchen—it's wanting water enough after dirts like you.”

CÆsar also was wiping his eye—the one nearest to Black Tom. “Come,” he said with plaintive resignation, “our errand was useless. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin, nor the leopard his spots.”

“No, but he can get a topcoat to cover them, though,” said Nancy. “Oh, that flea sticks, does it, CÆsar? Don't blame the looking-glass if your face is ugly.”

CÆsar pretended not to hear her. “Well,” he said, with a sigh discharged at Pete's back, “we'll pray, spite of appearances, that we may all go to heaven together some day.”

“No, thank you, not me,” said Nancy. “I wouldn't be-mane myself going anywhere with the like of you.”

The Job in CÆsar could bear up no longer. “Vain and ungrateful woman,” he cried, “who hath eaten of my bread and drunken of my cup——”

“Cursing me, are you?” said Nancy. “Sakes! you must have been found in the bulrushes at Pharaoh's daughter and made a prophet of.”

“No use bandying words, sir, wid a single woman dat lives alone wid a single man,” said Mr. Niplightly.

Nancy flopped the child from her right arm to her left, and with the back of her hand she slapped the constable across the face. “Take that for the cure of a bad heart,” she said, “and tell the Dempster I gave it you.”

Then she turned on the postman and Black Tom. “Out of it, you lil thief, your mouth's only a dirty town-well and your tongue's the pump in it. Go home and die, you big black spider—you're ould enough for it and wicked enough, too. Out of it, the lot of you!” she cried, and clashed the door at their backs, and then opened it again for a parting shot. “And if it's true you're on your way to heaven together, just let me know, and I'll see if I can't put up with the other place myself.”