Joyce went near and said: "What is the matter? Are you in pain? Can I help you?"
The woman raised her head, and Joyce recognised at once that she was Susan Priday.
Thoughts of the night on Mendip; of the fierce onslaught made on Gilbert Arundel by the big giant, and the almost certainty she felt, that the cruel blow aimed at her father was by the same hand, made Joyce start back and say, coldly:
"You had better not stay here, these are private grounds."
Piers, who was leaning against the bole of a beech tree, said:
"Yes; get up and go away. I will show you the gate into the road."
"Lady," said the girl, passionately, "I came to see _you_. I saw you sobbing and crying on the bench yonder, for I got into the plantation that way. I heard you sob, and call 'Father,' and then my heart nearly broke, and I came round at the back and got over the hedge. I felt as if I dare not speak to you. Do you know me, lady?"
"Yes," Joyce said; "of course I see who you are, but I--I cannot do anything for you, and we are all in great grief, very, very great grief," Joyce said, with a sudden spasm of agony in her voice.
"I know it, I know it, that's why I came; and I'm in grief, too. Father is gone away, no one knows where; the boys have run off, and, oh! the baby is dead. I did think I'd keep him, for mother's sake; but, in a drunken fit, father threw a pot of boiling water at me. It missed me, and the baby caught it on his neck and face, and it scalded him dreadful. The school mistress was kind, and so was Mrs. Amos, she that owns the farm; but he died--he died--and I am all alone. Oh! Miss, oh! dear young lady, pity me."
"I do pity you," Joyce said. "But where is your father? For you must be aware that suspicion points to him as the cause of my--of my dear father's death."
"Yes, I do know it. Oh! miss, forgive me, and let me come and serve you. I want no wage; but I'd die for you, if that would do you good. I have never forgot your face that night, nor how you spoke soft then instead of angry. Oh, miss, let me come and live with you. I will sleep on the ground. I'll do the work of two in the dairy, or in the house, and I want no wage. Poor mother always said God would take care of me, but He has taken away the baby, He has, that is the cruellest part. And father; oh! miss, you can't tell what it is to be filled with shame about a father."