Jael sat and sewed, and often looked quickly up at the window, as some footstep passed, and then looked down again and sighed.

Young Little never came.  He seemed to have disappeared from both their lives; quietly disappeared.

Next day, Sunday, Jael came to Miss Carden, after morning church, and said, meekly, “if you please, miss, may I go home?”

“Oh, certainly,” said Grace, a little haughtily.  “What for?”

Jael hung her head, and said she was not used to be long away.  Then she lifted her head, and her great candid eyes, and spoke more frankly.  “I feel to be drawed home.  Something have been at me all the night to that degree as I couldn’t close my eyes.  I could almost feel it, like a child’s hand, a pulling me East.  I’m afeared father’s ill, or may be the calves are bleating for me, that is better acquaint with them than sister Patty is.  And Hillsborough air don’t seem to ’gree with me now not altogether as it did at first.  If you please, miss, to let me go; and then I’ll come back when I’m better company than I be now.  Oh dear! oh dear!”

“Why, Jael, my poor girl, what is the matter?”

“I don’t know, miss.  But I feel very unked.”

“Are you not happy with me?”

“’Tis no fault of yourn, miss,” said Jael, rustic, but womanly.

“Then you are not happy here.”

No reply, but two clear eyes began to fill to the very brim.

Grace coaxed her, and said, “Speak to me like a friend.  You know, after all, you are not my servant.  I can’t possibly part with you altogether; I have got to like you so:  but, of course, you shall go home for a little while, if you wish it very, very much.”

“Indeed I do, miss,” said Jael.  “Please forgive me, but my heart feels like lead in my bosom.”  And, with these words, the big tears ran over, and chased one another down her cheeks.

Then Grace, who was very kind-hearted, begged her, in a very tearful voice, not to cry:  she should go home for a week, a fortnight, a month even.  “There, there, you shall go to-morrow, poor thing.”

Now it is a curious fact, and looks like animal magnetism or something, but the farm-house, to which Jael had felt so mysteriously drawn all night, contained, at that moment, besides its usual inmates, one Henry Little:  and how he came there is an important part of this tale, which I must deal with at once.

While Henry was still visiting Woodbine Villa, as related above, events of a very different character from those soft scenes were taking place at the works.  His liberal offer to the Edge-Tool Forgers had been made about a week, when, coming back one day from dinner to his forge, he found the smoky wall written upon with chalk, in large letters, neatly executed:—­

“Why overlook the handlers?

“Mary.”

He was not alarmed this time, but vexed.  He went and complained to Bayne; and that worthy came directly and contemplated the writing, in silence, for about a minute.  Then he gave a weary sigh, and said, with doleful resignation, “Take the chalk, and write.  There it is.”