CHAPTER XXXVIII.
"GOD BLESS YOU!"
Late the same night, Mrs. Haworth, who had been watching for her son alone in the grand, desolate room in which it was her lot to sit, rose to her feet on hearing him enter the house.
The first object which met his eye when he came in was her little figure and her patient face turned toward the door. As he crossed the threshold, she took a few steps as if to meet him, and then stopped.
"Jem!" she exclaimed. "Jem!"
Her voice was tremulous and her eyes bright with the indefinable feeling which seized upon her the moment she saw his face. Her utterance of his name was a cry of anxiousness and fear.
"What!" he said. "Are you here yet?"
He came to her and laid a hand upon her shoulder in a rough caress.
"You'd better go to bed," he said to her. "It's late, and I've got work to do."
"I felt," she answered, "as if I'd like to wait an' see you. I knowed I should sleep better for it—I always do."
There was a moment's pause in which she stroked his sleeve with her withered hand. Then he spoke.
