I owed you summat, too, Miss Tennant.

I haven't forgot how you spoke up for me when I was catched poachin'." Sara held out her hand to him impulsively, and Brady sheepishly extended his own grubby paw to meet it.
"You've more than paid me back, Brady," she said warmly.

"Thank you." Turning away, she hurried up the road, leaving Brady staring alternately at his right hand and at her receding figure.
"She's rare gentry, is Miss Tennant," he remarked with conviction, and then slouched off to drink himself blind at "The Jolly Sailorman." Black Brady was, after all, only an inexplicable bundle of good and bad impulses--very much like his betters.
Arrived at the house, Sara fled breathlessly upstairs to Molly's room.
Jane Crab was standing in the middle of it, staring dazedly at all the evidences of a hasty departure which surrounded her--an overturned chair here, an empty hat-box there, drawers pulled out, and clothes tossed heedlessly about in every direction.

In her hand she held a chemist's parcel, neatly sealed and labeled; she was twisting it round and round in her trembling, gnarled old fingers.
At the sound of Sara's entrance, she turned with an exclamation of relief.
"Oh, Miss Sara! I'm main glad you've come! Whatever's happened?
Miss Molly was here in bed not three parts of an hour ago!" Then, her boot-button eyes still roving round the room, she made a sudden dart towards the dressing-table.

"Here, miss, 'tis a note she's left for you!" she exclaimed, snatching it up and thrusting it into Sara's hands.
Written in Molly's big, sprawling, childish hand, the note was a pathetic mixture of confession and apology-- "I feel a perfect pig, Sara mine, leaving you behind to face Father, but it was my only chance of getting away, as I know Dad would have refused to let me marry for years and years.