“Let me be criminal, but never weak;
     For weaklings wear the stunted form of sin
     Without its brave apparel”—­

and considered Sam Buzza as he writhed beneath the sign-post.

Pat, pat, pat!

It was the muffled sound of footsteps on the dusty road.  He looked up.  A dark figure, the figure of a woman, was approaching.  Its air of timorous alertness, and its tendency to seek the shadow of the hedge-row, gave him some confidence.  He arose, and stepped forward into the broad moonlight.

The woman gave a short gasp and came to a halt, shrinking back against the hedge.  Something in her outline struck sharply on Sam’s sense, though with a flash of doubt and wonder.  She carried a small handbag, and wore a thick veil over her face.

“Who are you?” he asked gently.  “Don’t be afraid.”

The woman made no answer—­only cowered more closely against the hedge; and he heard her breath coming hard and fast.  Once more—­and for the third time that night—­Sam pulled the slide of his lantern.

“Mother!”

“Oh!  Sam, Sam, don’t betray me!  I’ll go back—­indeed I’ll go back!”

“In Heaven’s name, mother, what are you doing here?”

The retort was obvious, but Mrs. Buzza merely cried—­

“Dear Sam, have pity on me, and take me back!  I’ll go quietly—­quite quietly.”

The idea of his mother (who weighed eighteen stone if an ounce) resisting with kicks and struggles might have caused Sam some amusement, but his brain was overcrowded already.

“It’s a judgment,” she went on incoherently, wringing her hands; “and I thought I had planned it so cleverly.  I dressed up his double-bass, Sam, and put it in the bed—­oh!  I am a wicked woman—­and pinned a note to the pin-cushion to say he had driven me to it, throwing the breakfast things over the quay-door—­real Worcester, Sam, and marked at the bottom of each piece; and a carriage from the Five Lanes Hotel to meet me at twelve o’clock; but I’d rather go home, Sam; I’ve been longing, all the way, to go back; it’s been haunting me, that double-bass, all the time—­with my nightcap, too—­the one with real lace—­on the head of it.  Oh! take me home, Sam.  I’m a wicked woman!”

Sam, after all, was a Trojan, and I therefore like to record his graces.  He drew his mother’s arm within his with much tenderness, kissed her, and began to lead her homewards quietly and without question.

But the poor soul could not be silent; and so, very soon, the whole story came out.  At the mention of Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys Sam shut his teeth sharply.

“I shall never be able to face her, Sam.”

“I don’t think you need trouble about that, mother,” he answered grimly.

“But I do.  It was she—­”

But at this moment, from the hedge, a few yards in front, there issued a hollow groan.

They halted, and questioned each other with frightened eyes.