Page:Fletcher--Where Highways Cross.djvu/132

 see it all, and I knew why Stephen Wood had professed his friendship for the man he betrayed.

"I left Bristol, after that, sir, and come to Clothford, where one of my friends had set up a business. I was safe there from Stephen Wood, and I was comfortably provided for until my friend died. The person who took her business over, failed to carry it on, and I was in sore straits until that day you met me in Sicaster market-place. Since then you know my story.

"But now, sir, about my husband. Mr. Hepworth, I don't know, oh, I wish I did!—whether he's alive or dead. For, oh, sir, when he had been in prison nearly two years he tried to escape, and they followed him over the moors and shot at him—and—and some time after they found a body, and they said it was his—and—and—"

Here Elisabeth brought her story to an end. She suddenly burst into a storm of passionate weeping. Hepworth looked at her for a moment, and then he rose softly and left the room.