Mary Whittaker was a girl of fourteen when her mother had married Samuel Learoyd.  Of her father she knew nothing.  He had died when she was a baby.  From the first the Learoyds had proved an ill-matched pair.  Anne Learoyd, her mother, had been brought up in Leeds, and having been used to all the excitements of life in a big town, found the solitary farm lonesome.  Samuel Learoyd, though genial enough at times in the society of his male friends, was capricious.  His temper was often sullen, and when in one of his gloomy moods he would spend the whole evening in his farm kitchen in morose silence.  This state of mind was in part due to physical infirmity.  As a child he had been subject to epileptic fits, and though these grew less frequent as he advanced to manhood, he never entirely shook them off, and during his married life a long spell of gloomy misanthropy would sometimes end in the return of one of these attacks.  He was, too, a proud man, and his pride bred in him a morbid sensibility towards any slight, real or fanciful, that was practised on him.  He treated his stepdaughter not unkindly, but never accepted any parental responsibility towards her.

Meanwhile Anne Learoyd, finding no congenial society in her own home, spent much of her time in neighbours’ houses.  Her chief friend was the landlady of the Woolpack Inn, a public-house situated midway between the farm-house and Holmton.  Here whole afternoons and evenings were spent, and the work of the farm-house was left in the hands of Mary Whittaker, towards whom her mother had never shown any real affection.  Years passed away and the relations between husband and wife grew steadily worse, till at length the crisis came.  A new barman was appointed at the Woolpack, a man whom Anne Learoyd had known during her early life in Leeds.  Rumour was soon busy with the relations which existed between the barman and the farmer’s wife, and after a time suspicious stories reached the ears of Samuel Learoyd.  A violent scene between husband and wife took place in the farm kitchen, but, in spite of this, Anne’s visits to the public-house continued as before.  One afternoon, when her husband was attending a cattle-mart in a neighbouring town, Anne Learoyd, without saying a word to her daughter, left the house and was still absent when her husband returned for supper.  Mary Whittaker was at once dispatched to the Woolpack Inn, and, after an hour, returned with the news that her mother was not there and that the barman was also missing.  With an oath, Learoyd saddled his mare and rode in all haste to Holmton.  Finding no news of the missing couple in the town he made his way to the nearest station, where he found that a man and woman answering to his description had left by train for Liverpool four hours before.  Learoyd, his heart raging with fury and wounded pride, followed in pursuit.  He arrived at Liverpool in the early hours of the next morning, and, making his way to the docks, discovered that the fugitives had sailed