"to buy silks an' satins fur th' gentry. Yo' nivver seed her i' owt else."
And all knew whom she meant, and joined in shouts of rage.
Sometimes it was Ffrench against whom their anger was most violent—Ffrench, who had been born among them a gentleman, and who should have been gentleman enough not to plunder and deceive them. And again it was Haworth—Haworth, who had lived as hard as any of them and knew what their poverty was, and should have done fairly by them, if ever man should.
In the course of the afternoon Murdoch, gathering no news of Haworth elsewhere, went to his house. A panic-stricken servant let him in and led him into the great room where he had spent his first evening, long ago. Despite its splendor, it looked empty and lifeless, but when he entered, there rose from a carved and satin upholstered chair in one corner a little old figure in a black dress—Jem Haworth's mother, who came to him with a white but calm face.
"Sir," were her greeting words, "where is he?"
"I came to see him," he answered, "I thought——"
"No," she interrupted, "he is not here. He has not been here since morning."
She began to tremble, but she shed no tears.
"There's been a good many to ask for him," she went on. "Gentlemen, an' them as was rough, an' didn't mind me bein' a woman an' old. They were harder than you'd think, an'—troubled as I've been, I was glad he was not here to see 'em. But I'd be more comfortable if I could rightly understand."
"I can only tell you what I know," he said. "It isn't much. I have only gathered it from people on the streets."
