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"But it ain't the right day; they suits their own convenience as to their rounds, and is noways petticklar when they comes," said Job, going out to have a bit of chat with them.

There was a plaintive fall in the rude music, softened by distance and night. "Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day," as Portia says; and they sat on listening, without speaking or stirring. The singers had ended their carol, and, quite unconscious of their heresy, were singing a hymn to the Virgin - which, with the tenacity of village customs, had lasted on nearly three hundred years after the time when the meaning had died out of the words.

"What does it all signify in the world, uncle Amyas ?" said Lettice, when the music stopped, bringing up her stool to his side, and leaning her head against him as she had not done since her "troubles." "How is it with life and all things? While the music was talking, as 'twere, it seemed to me as if I could see it all plain, but now 'tis got all dark again."

"I'm sure I can't say," replied Amyas, sighing, with that unwillingness to bring up his faculties to tackle a hard subject which is found in many men of more education than Amyas.

The small white cat came purring up to her. It had grown quite wild and shy during the long months she had been away, and would not come near her on her return. Its strangeness had vexed her, for she valued its little friendship as a reminder of happy days with Everhard. Now, when she took no notice, it jumped into her lap. Presently, as he pushed in the halfburned brands to the fire, and a flame shot up, he saw her disappointed face.

"Look, dear child," said her uncle, with an effort:yer might talk yerself hoarse, splaining things to that little kit; 'twouldn't understand any bit the more all yer strove: same with you when yer was a baby, what good were it telling of ye the how and the why ? See in part-through a glass darkly," he half muttered to himself. "I'm thinking it must be the same with us. Every now and then we seems to catch a light, and then it's sunk again, like that

The next day seemed to Lettice interminable. Her uncles left home early. It had been a wild night: the wind was whirling round the house, tearing at the branches of the great elms; sobbing and moaning, as it seemed, round the house, with gusts of cold rain drifting fitfully past from time to time-which was the only way in which the winter showed itself. The draggletailed fowls and peacocks, the dismal-looking cows and horses, took shelter as they could: everything looked miserable, and drenched, and dreary, and uncomfortable without, while within Mrs. Wynyate's ceaseless complaints of the dirt brought in by each successive entrance, had gone on since the morning. Lettice, in silence, had brushed and tidied and straightened in vain; and she now sat, when evening came, depressed and wretched, in a sort of comfortless despair, trying to realize to herself what was going on at Mapleford, and the share which Everhard would be forced to take in the trial when at last her grandmother came into the room, and she rose, fearing she knew not what; but Mrs. Wynyate sat down quietly by her side and uttered not a word.

"You'd best not sit tip any longer, Lettice; 'tis no use, and it's getting late," said she at last, and then, seizing the girl's hand as she passed her chair with unwonted feeling, in an iron grasp, the old woman went on in a broken, rugged voice, with vehement energy: "Pray, child, pray, that it mayn't be barren sorrow to us all, but that it may bear fruit to life eternal!" and, to Lettice's surprise, she saw a great tear in each dim eye, though they did not fall. She stooped down with a sudden impulse and kissed the stern old face for the first time in her life with a feeling of affection.

"Good-night, granny-thank you, dear granny!" she cried, running out of the room to hide her own tears, for Mrs. Wynyate had a horror of emotions.

The next morning she was crossing the upper end of the farmyard, when, to her surprise, she came upon Job.

"Well, so ye see I'm come back; I were just coming in to tell ye. The trial came on so late as I couldn't make it out to get home last night," he said, tranquilly; "so

I set off ere 'twere light this marnin' wi' the butcher's cart. Amyas will be here afore long."

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But what came of the trial? how were it all?" cried the poor girl breathlessly. 'Why, ye see, there were a big 'un in a wig went on a pokin' and a pounding at yer father, ever so long up and down; and hadn't he done this'n and hadn't he a done that'n all the days o' his life? - till at last grandfa judge he comes down o' him and says, That there ain't fair, you ha'n't a got nothin' to do with all that, only just did he kill Dixon?"

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'What! 's Dixon dead?" cried Lettice. "Nay, he's none dead, but was going on for better, last I heerd."

The poor girl wrung her hands, past her patience at the impossibility of getting on. "But how were it settled at the end?" said Mrs. Wynyate, coming up to the res

cue.

tosses 'um up like a bull does a red handkercher, till there ain't nothin' left o' a plain man's tale, there ain't."

not

When Amyas returned there was much additional information to be gained even out of him; he had that disinclination to gather up his recollections, as it were, into concrete description, which is so often the case among men. One thing, however, Lettice did pick up. Addressing no person in particular, he said,

"That young Wallcott came out of it uncommon well, I will say that for him; he didn't say too much nor too little, but there he held on to a plain story and stuck to it. Twere dark and he didn't know the man, and his face were blacked, and he saw no pistol fired, and Dixon weren't dead nor nigh to it," he said.

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And Norton ?" said his mother, impatiently. Did ye see him after all were over? and did he take on about it? and "Some on 'um said one thing and some what did he say about going away so far? said t'other way. I'm a' muzzed and can't He didn't seem to think scarce anything tell rightly how 'twere. There were a little much anyways. There's a ship going right chap, sharp as a needle, what fired the pis-off to Australia, they tells him, and he says, tol, says one; and next one pruv he weren't I'm a very handy chap, and shan't be long there a bit, his face being blacked so as they a making my way out there, I take it.'" couldn't know him."

"Whose face?" said Lettice.

"Twere as if they set up the things for to bowl 'um down again, as we does skittles, up them, down t'others; to it agin, my masters."

"But the end, what was the end? what's his sentence,-Norton's sentence?" said Mrs. Wynyate, exasperated to a degree, and shaking him violently by the coat, as if by that means she could shake the words out of the interminable Job.

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'Well, he were transported for life, or twenty-five years was it? I ain't quite clear, I ain't," blurted out Job, angrily. “So there, now, ye has it yer own way, and a great hurry you're in to be sure for such fine news," he went on, in great dudgeon at not being allowed to tell his story as he pleased.

Lettice breathed a little more freely at last.

"There they was bothering and boring Everhard about his helping off one Caleb at I can't think whatever he done it for," wondered Job.

sea.

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Norton went out to Australia, where, as he expected, he did very well before longearned his ticket-of-leave, and "founded a family." Antecedents were leniently regarded in those parts; besides, there were many worse men in his Majesty's dominions than Norton Lisle, who yet had never been boarded and lodged at the public expense; there are no holes, however, for pegs of his peculiar construction in an old civilization, unless indeed he had 5,000l. a year, when he could have indulged his sporting instincts without any one finding much fault either with him or them.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
WHAT CAME OF IT.

EVERHARD had been a good deal badgered and browbeaten at the trial, and when it was over he went moodily up once more to his father's house, where luckily he found Mrs. Wallcott alone.

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"At all events, I haven't done any hurt to Lettie's father, I don't believe; but it's been a bad time, mother," said he, sitting down gloomily in the kitchen. "And then my father came up to me in court, and said out loud, There! ye must be main glad to be well out o' that mess o' marrying a felon's girl!' Does he think I'm going to leave hold o' her hand because she wants helping more, I'd like to know?" he went on, marching up and down the kitchen.

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"Now you see here, my dear boy," she began, with great earnestness. "Don't'ee begin wi' a set-to wi' your father: it just breaks my heart and don't do a bit a good, but just makes him ten times worse, knockin' o' yer heads together, hitting just where 'twould be better missed. You just leave all quiet, and let me try and make it straight. There's times and there's times, and a continual drip, they says, 'll wear away the hardest stone."

"But then where shall we be, mother, Lettice and me, before you've got through the rock? why we shall be dead and buried, and much good it will do us then to win with him," said Everhard, half laughing at his own lugubrious images.

"Well, ye see, if Norton had been hung, maybe it mightn't have been so well," replied Mrs. Wallcott, meditatively; "but now as he'll just be settled right away, outside nowhere, as one may say, and beyond reach o' mischief, 'tis next best to being dead, and summat like it: so yer father may come round better now, nor before time, who knows?"

Everhard accordingly held his tongue during the remainder of the evening, till he went back to Seaford; and his father seemed to be only too glad to take it for granted that all was as he desired, to tide over the difficulty by leaving things alone under cover of a truce, and to consider that his son would forget all about it in time.

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Give him the rein enow, and he'll tire of it and think better of it hisself, that's what I say," said he, with a sigh of relief when Everhard had left the house.

"I don't see what you're to do if he's so bent upon it," said Mrs. Wallcott, philosophically, a day or two after, when she had propounded Everhard's case to her husband for the sixth or seventh time. She was standing with the top of a saucepan in her hand, while he went on fulminating vengeance against his son for his crimes.

sure, and so uppish no one can't stand her; and Lettice-if that's her name - I don't see as she won't do as well as another on 'um. Girls is poor flimsy things nowadays, not a bit like when I were young; but there, I don't know who'd be good enow for my boy, that I don't. You may go farther and fare worse, I says, Mr. Wallcott." Mrs. Wallcott was a mistress of that style called the roundabout; and how she ever reached her conclusions was a mystery known only to herself.

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Yes, I that have just made it all good about the Woodhouse, that's all safe in my hands. The papers are to be finished today. And the girl's uncle ruined right off. and her father a smuggler and in danger o' hanging. A pretty man for Everhard to consort wi', as I've saved and slaved for all my life!" shouted Wallcott, angrily.

"We didn't use to be so petticklar," answered his wife. "What for are ye collying* o' me?' says the pot to the kettle." It was too true to be pleasant.

"I tell ye, I'd rather leave my money to the pigs," cried Wallcott, his face purple with passion and the veins on his forehead swollen with the violence of his rage. Mrs. Wallcott drew back; she well knew it would do no good to cross him in such a mood. He turned out of the house towards the stable, muttering angrily. "Bring out the new bay," he called out roughly. It was an ill-tempered beast, like himself, which he had just bought at a good deal under its value for that very reason: one of those "bargains" which are so very dear at the money.

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The horse fidgeted and moved excitedly, first to one side and then the other, so that its master was a long time without being able to mount. Quiet, ye brute!" he went on calling furiously. At last, with much difficulty, he managed to scramble on its back, and even before he was well in the saddle struck it repeatedly and angrily with his stick. The horse resented the blows, started violently, threw up his heels, reared, and Wallcott was unseated, though he slipt off rather than fell.

"Anne's been and burnt the bacon again," said she parenthetically, as she looked into it. "That girl's enough to sour cider, "I'm not hurt a bit," cried he, trying to she's so careless, that she is." Then resum-get up; but he was a large man, and eviing the thread of her discourse "if thread | dently a good deal shaken; and as the byit could be called where thread was none," standers helped him off the ground, they -"It ain't as if you'd a got heaps o' boys found he could hardly stand upright: his and girls o' yer own, Mr. Wallcott, for to arm fell powerless, and they carried him leave yer goods to. You've got but one on towards the house. 'um, and I can't see as there ain't any harm in the girl. I seen her out o' winder t'other day along wi' her uncle what were a coming out o' that Susan Smart's which it's wonderful what a temper she have got to be

"Tis a stroke," said his wife placidly, as they brought him in. "They doctors

"Brief as the lightning in the colly'd night.”— Midsummer Night's Dream.

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There was scarcely anything to be done for the old man. He continued in the same helpless state, growing more and more violent as he was less able to make himself understood till at last, as one stroke succeeded another, he sank gradually into a kind of dotage. Dreams of money or its absence the ruling passion strong in death hung about him; he was beset with the idea that he was ruined and penniless, and should have to go to the workhouse, and the only way in which he could be kept quiet was to pay so many shillings a week into his own hands, and as long as the feeling of the money remained with him he was

more content.

The final steps as to the mortgage had not been taken before old Wallcott was taken ill; but, in spite of this delay, Amyas was preparing as before for the order to

move.

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'March will search, April will try,
May'll show if ye live or die.'

Well, I've a don my dooty, and I'm ready
to goo; and there I shall sit on the right
hand o' God, and o' my beautiful Saviour, I
shall," said he, with some importance; then
coming down rapidly from this seraphic
state of mind to more pressing interests:
"You tell Madam to send me a sup o' broth,
or summat, I feel so leer" (empty), he
went on in his usual peremptory fashion.
There, if I could but twiddle down to the
Woodhouse and tumble the butter, 'twould
fresh me up a bit, it would!"

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"We're in hopes you'll git down after a bit now 'tis so fine, too," said Lettice. "And how can that be, if I can't neither eat nor sleep?" said the old man, crossly; "there's my missus got so stiff that it terrifies her for to make the bed, to shake it and hemp it as I wants it, and they tells me it's all up wi' your uncle, as he can't by no means stop on at the Woodhouse because of the mortgage, and then where shall I be?

And what's come o' that young Wallcott, I'd like to know, as used to be here so Sure you might just be quiet and see much?" he went on presently. "Tis a what'll come of it," said Job, plaintively, greatish while sin' I heard talk o' he; he when they received a message through Ned, were a nice tidy chap, enow, and he's from Everhard, begging that no changes tookt hisself off for good and all, they says. should be made at present at the Wood-That'll be along o' Madame Wynyate's dohouse. Amyas, however, could not divest ings, I'm thinking. Well, ye know they himself of the idea that Everhard, when he had the power, might be wanting in the will, and went on trying to make his arrangements. It was a most painful tenure, indeed, to him to be thus hung up between earth and heaven, dependent on the good pleasure of he scarcely knew whom.

CHAPTER XXIX.

SPRINGTIDE.

Ir was the first real spring day, fresh and bright.

"Lettice, you go and see after Dannel, as sends word he's sick and can't come," said her grandmother, in the afternoon; and the girl set off across the meadows, where everything was beginning to bud as early as was possible in the year; for there had been scarcely any winter, as sometimes happens in that favoured climate.

"Well, Lettie," said the old "dark" man, recognizing her step as she came into the cottage, "I'm terrible bad, I be, you may depend on't; my cough he's a deal worse; there's summat tarblish wrong a goin' on in my inside, and if ye don't tackle he, 'twill be a hard matter for me to climb May-hill. They says, ye know,

young men there's no dependence on' em'; they comes and they goes when they pleases, and as they pleases; and they won't ha' none to gainsay 'um. 'Tis a pity, too, as he'll never come back no more, for he was a trimming smart young fellow he was," be ended these consolatory remarks.

It is not pleasant to hear such things concerning the tenderest part of one's future, even from a person who knows nothing whatever about the matter. Lettice sighed as she came out of the little dark cottage.

There was a "tender grace .99 about the exquisite evening, like the first opening of a rosebud; the world seemed full of sweet scents and sweet sounds, as if the whole earth was bursting into bloom, as she walked slowly home. Everywhere the flowers were opening, the pale green corn springing, a fringe of fern followed the line of the deep lane, the hedgerows were set with daffodils and primroses; the children all had "posies" of them in their hands; the earth was a perfect garden. There was a fresh springing feeling in the air; the birds twittering, the axes of the woodcutters ringing through the wood, and the laughing of the "yaflingale," the great red and green woodpecker which glanced across the glades

like a tropical bird, in a coat of quite another colouring than the sober browns our birds generally affect in the north; but poor Lettice was too sad at heart to enjoy either the sights or sounds. She sat down at last near the little pool - the scene of her childish misdeeds. The water was clear, the pale blue sky was clear; the trunks of the great oaks on the top of a green mossy bank, overrun with a perfect garden of daffodils, which seemed to be overflowing down its edge to see themselves in the water, were all reflected below. She sat and watched them absently; it had been too lovely to pass by, but she had forgotten at what she was looking, as she rested her head upon her hands. In spite of the size and strength of her belief in Everhard-"which it's as big and strong as the minster at Mapleford," she said to herself— she was begining to find it long, and to sigh for some tidings of him. He had taken Amyas's prohibition to come near them till all was clear, far too literally for her comfort.

Something stirred, as it seemed to her, in the water below, and she raised her graceful little head to see down into it when she met Everhard's eyes looking up at her, as it were, out of the water itself; he was so continually in her thoughts and so mixed up and connected with everything in her mind, that if he had come up bodily out of the pool itself, she would hardly have been startled or considered it otherwise than quite natural.

"You never heard me, Lettice! what were you thinking about so hard?" said he, smiling, as he sat down beside her, and took her in his arms.

"But are you sure that it's all quite right that you should come?" whispered she, nestling up to him, however; and that they won't mind it at Mapleford, and that uncle Amyas will be content ?"

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"You're like a bit of conscience set on end in a little red hood, I do believe," answered he, laughing; it's very right indeed; how can it be wrong when you and me come together?"

But in spite of this very convincing argument, the uneasy look did not pass out of her anxious face till he had told her all that had happened.

"My mother's been as kind as kind; you must go and see her soon, Lettie; I think that'll thank her best, to see your little face. You see it's her money is set upon the Woodhouse after all: so she's a right, if any has, to say yes or no, and she gives it up to us, you and me, that's her rights. (I never saw such a place for wild daffodils as this is.)"

And you mean we can live here along wi' uncle Amyas, in the dear old place all together all our lives?" replied Lettice, with her eyes sparkling. "And that's the good thing you've been doing of all this weary while? You're a very good man," she added earnestly.

"And what have you been doing all the time?" said he presently, looking down into her eyes with a smile.

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It's very dreary waiting," answered she, hiding her face on his shoulder. “I don't think you can tell how long the days seem." 'Why can't I tell?" laughed he.

"Because you're a man, you know, and can move about and be angry, and all sorts o' such things that serves to pass the time." "What! do ye think that's such a pretty pastime ?" answered he.

"Them as tries it seems always to take great delight in it," said she, with a smile and a blush.

Then, after he had proved convincingly to his own and her satisfaction that everything he had ever done had always been the very best possible under the circumstances,

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'Why, that moss is just like green velvet where you're sitting, Lettice, with the winter being so mild. It's a very pleasant place this, to be sure. I don't wonder at folk being sorry to part with it."

"But you mean uncle Amyas to stop, you said? How did he take it when you spoke and told him?" said she, anxiously, beginning to see that all was not quite so simple as she had fancied.

"Well, I suppose he's to stop. Why, he ain't so over and above fond o' me, and so he wasn't that overjoyed, you know, at having to be as it were obligated, anyhow."

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"But he'll be fond enow of you, Everhard, come he knows you better," cried she -the colour rising to her cheeks - in her uncle's defence. Ye can't think what a man he is! There ain't a mossel not so big as a penny-piece in his heart o' what's low, nor selfish, nor mean; and now oughtn't we to go home and see after him a bit?" said she, as he would have detained her; and they sauntered slowly back together as the shadows fell.

"Sunny, fresh, bright evening, how pleasant the world looks," said Everhard; "and coming out of the town too. Hark how the lambs are bleating, and see that pair o' cutty wrens beginning a nest. It's quite a shame to go in before sundown."

But still she drew him gently on, for, in the midst of her own happiness, she began to realize that there might be sore hearts not very far away. Amyas was standing

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