"Yes, he has indeed. A friend o' Jem's, as he'd lent it to."
"Did you know the chap?" asked the man, who was really anxious for
Jem's exculpation, and caught a gleam of hope from her last speech.
"No! I can't say as I did. But he were put on as a workman."
"It's maybe only one of them policemen, disguised."
"Nay; they'd never go for to do that, and trick me into telling on
my own son. It would be like seething a kid in its mother's milk;
and that th' Bible forbids."
"I don't know," replied the man.
Soon afterwards he went away, feeling unable to comfort, yet
distressed at the sight of sorrow; she would fain have detained him,
but go he would. And she was alone.
She never for an instant believed Jem guilty: she would have
doubted if the sun were fire, first: but sorrow, desolation, and
at times anger, took possession of her mind. She told the
unconscious Alice, hoping to rouse her to sympathy; and then was
disappointed, because, still smiling and calm, she murmured of her
mother, and the happy days of infancy.
XX.
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