The little widow screamed and dropped the light and then screamed again, but a feeble voice reassured her.
'Richard Haddon, is that you ?' she said severely.

'Oh! you wicked, bad, vicious boy! Where have you been?
What've you been doing ?' She was busying herself preparing the lamp, and her tongue ran on.
'You're breakin' your poor mother's heart--breakin' my heart with your bushrangin' an' villainy, bringin' down the police, an' trouble, an' sorrow on me.' The little woman's nerves had been sorely tried of late with her own troubles and her neighbours', and she broke down now and wept.
'An' you don't care,' she sobbed, 'you don't care a bit how I suffer! Now the lamp was lit, and the widow turned her streaming eyes upon her incorrigible young son, and instantly her whole expression changed.

She forgot to weep, she ceased to complain; she gazed at Dick and her bosom was charged with terror, pity, and remorse.

Truly he was a pitiful and ghostly object, sitting there in his mud, looking very small and pinched, with unaccustomed hollows in his pale cheeks, and here and there a nasty bloodstain showing brightly against the yellow clay.
'Dick!' screamed Mrs.Haddon.
The next moment he lay in his mother's arms, clinging to her with tenacious fingers, crying hysterically, utterly unlike the Dick she thought she knew so well; and she kissed him, and wept over him, and murmured to him as if he were really a baby again.

She ascribed all to terror aroused by the knowledge that the police were after him.