examining every gloomy corner. No one was there; no trace of any one having been there until, as she reached the other end, her glance fell on some dark object lying close under the open window. At this sight Lucy could not suppress the long-stifled scream, and it was not until her mistress pouncing down upon the mysterious thing, revealed the fact that it was only a couple of logs and a bundle of sticks, neatly tied together with a piece of string, that she found enough relief from terror to burst into tears.

“Who’s the benevolent burglar, I wonder,” cried Olivia, her spirits rising instantly at the discovery of the little anonymous act of kindness.

She ran to the window and looked out. There was no one to be seen; but on the window-ledge lay a box of cigar lights.

“The mysterious stranger again!” she said to herself. Then turning to the maid, said, “Now, Lucy, make a fire as fast as you can. There are some newspapers with the rugs. Here are sticks and logs and matches. We shall feel different creatures when we are once warm.”

She shut down the window and boiled some water with her little spirit lamp; while Lucy, with cunning hands, made in the huge rusty grate a fire which was soon roaring up the chimney, and pouring its bright warm light on floor and wall and ceiling. The spirits both of mistress and maid began to rise a little as they drew up one of the smaller trunks to the fire, and made a frugal meal of biscuits and milkless tea.

“It is a horrid place, though, Miss Olivia,” said Lucy, who had been chilled to the heart by Sarah Wall’s utterances, and did not feel wholly sure that she herself had not been bewitched by that uncanny person.

“Oh, I suppose it might have been worse. They might have thrown bricks at us,” said her mistress; “and remember that two people have already been very kind to us.”

“Perhaps the young farmer-man only took to us just out of aggravation because his father didn’t,” suggested Lucy, who was a well-brought-up girl, and affected to take cynical views of young men. “And as for the gentleman, why, the old woman as good as said decent folk had better have nothing to do with him.”

[Pg 21]

[Pg 21]

“But you surely wouldn’t take that miserable old woman’s word for it?”

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