for whom shall beam the ready smile or soften the warm brown eyes.

There are another two seated in the brick-tiled kitchen. Mary o’ Stuart’s commonly called Moll o’ Stute’s, and Mr. William Black. Moll shall have precedence in honour of her sex and calling, a noble calling, of a verity, for Mary was the midwife of the valley. She is scantily clad for the time of the year, yet you judge that it is not from cold that she huddles by the fireside, but rather for convenience of lighting the black clay pipe she so intently sucks, one long skinny brown arm resting on her knee, her eyes fixed upon the glowing fire that casts its flickering light upon the sharp hard-featured face. Her black hair is long and though streaked with grey is still abundant, and rebellious locks, escaped from the coil, stray over the scraggy shoulders, round which a shabby, faded, flannel shawl hangs loosely. No one knows where Moll lives, if it be not at the Hanging Gate, which, if not her home, is for Moll a sort of Poste Restante, and if not there to be always seen there she can always be heard of. Moll has less need of fixed abode than ordinary mortals. She has reached the age of fifty or more, and still bears her virgin name and owns to neither chick nor child, though there were that breathed mysterious hints of wild passages of thirty years gone bye, when Moll’s cheek was soft and rosy and her form, though tall, lacked nought of grace and suppleness. “A saucy queen,” the village grannies said, “and one that always thought herself too good for common folk; but pride had had its fall,”—a reflection that seemed to bring comfort to the toothless, hollow-cheeked beldames as they wheezed asthmatically of the scandals of a youth long fled, when Mary’s foot light upon the village green and her laugh was readiest at feast or wakes.

On the opposite side of the hearth sat Mr. Black, the village Schoolmaster, a little lean man well past his meridian, his hair sparse and thin, and sparse and thin all his form and frame. He is clean shaven, but his lips are firm and his eye bright and keen. Though he has the lean and hungry look of the born conspirator, never did such a look so belie a man; for a gentler being never breathed than William Black, nor one more secure in the affection and esteem of high and low for many miles around. He was not a that country man and how or by what fate, driven by what adversity or sore mischance, he had drifted to that wild neighbourhood none presumed to know. He kept a day school for boys and girls, whose parents paid fourpence a child per week when they could afford it, and less when they couldn’t—generally less. Then on alternate week-nights he kept a night-school 

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