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"The littl'uns are at Mrs. Coven's, and the big'uns at Mrs. Cudd's. I wöan't have you all catering about here—so you go either to Mrs. Coven's or to Mrs. Cudd's."

Susan was surprised at this order, for on earlier occasions nobody had been turned out. But she went off to Mrs. Cudd—the stockman's wife at Pickdick—where she found Tamar and Ruthie and Aaron settling down in the lean-to shed on a bed of heath and bracken which they had pulled themselves. That night they slept like cattle, and the next morning their father appeared, standing at the foot of their bed in the grey light like a ghost, his face as grey and empty as a ghost's. He told them in a hoarse rough voice that they could come home when they liked, for their mother was dead. Then he turned round and walked off without another word.

They were all far too frightened to go home, and that night they slept again among the bracken in Mrs. Cudd's little lean-to. She told them they could stay as long as they liked, but that she could not feed them, for she had barely enough to feed her own children; and in the end it was hunger that drove them home. They found their father sitting huddled over the kitchen fire, where the pot was cooking in the smoke. His employer, Mus' Cruttenden at Pickdick, had shown his compassion in substantial form and had given ten shillings towards the funeral expenses, a whole side of bacon and a peck of dried pease. Mrs. Ades, the midwife, had made some of the bacon and pease into a stew, and was coming round in half an hour to dish it out.