‘And didst ta see King George an’ Queen Charlotte?’

Philip could not answer—­did not hear.  His soul had gone out to meet Sylvia, who entered with quiet slowness quite unlike her former self.  Her face was wan and white; her gray eyes seemed larger, and full of dumb tearless sorrow; she came up to Philip, as if his being there touched her with no surprise, and gave him a gentle greeting as if he were a familiar indifferent person whom she had seen but yesterday.  Philip, who had recollected the quarrel they had had, and about Kinraid too, the very last time they had met, had expected some trace of this remembrance to linger in her looks and speech to him.  But there was no such sign; her great sorrow had wiped away all anger, almost all memory.  Her mother looked at her anxiously, and then said in the same manner of forced cheerfulness which she had used before,—­

‘Here’s Philip, lass, a’ full o’ Lunnon; call thy father in, an we’ll hear a’ about t’ new-fangled pleughs.  It’ll be rare an’ nice a’ sitting together again.’

Sylvia, silent and docile, went out to the shippen to obey her mother’s wish.  Bell Robson leant forward towards Philip, misinterpreting the expression on his face, which was guilt as much as sympathy, and checked the possible repentance which might have urged him on at that moment to tell all he knew, by saying, ’Lad! it’s a’ for t’ best.  He were noane good enough for her; and I misdoubt me he were only playin’ wi’ her as he’d done by others.  Let her a-be, let her a-be; she’ll come round to be thankful.’

Robson bustled in with loud welcome; all the louder and more talkative because he, like his wife, assumed a cheerful manner before Sylvia.  Yet he, unlike his wife, had many a secret regret over Kinraid’s fate.  At first, while merely the fact of his disappearance was known, Daniel Robson had hit on the truth, and had stuck to his opinion that the cursed press-gang were at the bottom of it.  He had backed his words by many an oath, and all the more because he had not a single reason to give that applied to the present occasion.  No one on the lonely coast had remarked any sign of the presence of the men-of-war, or the tenders that accompanied them, for the purpose of impressment on the king’s ships.  At Shields, and at the mouth of the Tyne, where they lay in greedy wait, the owners of the Urania had caused strict search to be made for their skilled and protected specksioneer, but with no success.  All this positive evidence in contradiction to Daniel Robson’s opinion only made him cling to it the more; until the day when the hat was found on the shore with Kinraid’s name written out large and fair in the inside, and the tell-tale bit of ribbon knotted in the band.  Then Daniel, by a sudden revulsion, gave up every hope; it never entered his mind that it could have fallen off by any accident.  No! now Kinraid was dead and drowned, and it was a bad job, and the sooner it could be forgotten the