"You have a house to live in, clothes to cover you, and food to eat."

So has a well-to-do farmer's cow in winter. If I felt like a cow, I should consider myself well off, I dare say."

"Who said anything about cows? You always wander so far from the point. Not only that, but you have your uncle's money to look to. When he dies, you will, every one, be well off, and I shall perhaps have a little rest, if I'm not killed with trouble before ever he goes-poor, dear old man !''

The last words came hastily, as an afterthought. "It is best to bow at the name of the devil-he can do so much harm." Mrs. Conisbrough had become suddenly desirous of counteracting the impression which her first remarks might have produced, that she cherished hopes of Mr. Aglionby's speedy demise, or that she considered him a stingy curmudgeon. If any such speech ever penetrated to his ears, the service of all these years would assuredly go for nought.

"I would far rather that uncle would help me to make myself well off," said Judith. I mean as soon as I get the chance to write to some of the women's rights ladies, and ask them to help me; only they will very naturally inquire, 'What can you do?' and I must perforce answer, Nothing, madam.' "If ever you do so disgrace yourself, you-you will break my heart,' said Mrs. Conisbrough, who at the words women's rights' beheld in her mind's eye a woman on a platform, dressed in men's clothes, and shouting at the top of her voice. She herself was one of those women who never look at a newspaper, and viewed them in the light of useful protectors to white-painted pantry shelves, when not ruined for that exalted purpose by the stupid persons who would cut them, instead of leaving them in the original broadsheet.

But Judith had left the room, far more deeply moved and agitated than her mother, though the latter bore every outward appearance of chagrin. Mrs. Conisbrough was left to fume over her troubles. She accused her girls of being obstinate, self-opinionated, and unconventional; she did not know where they got that restless spirit from; in her days young people were much more strictly brought up, and scarcely ventured to

open their mouths before their eldersthe fact being that her own daughters had never been brought up at all. She always allowed things to drift as far and as long as she could. The girls had grown up, struggled up, scrambled upanything that the reader likes. They had never been brought up by a hand firm and tender at once; and this fact accounted for some of their defects as well as for some of their virtues. Then again, though their lives were even more secluded, their opportunities fewer, their means narrower than hers had been at their age; though they lived at the end of the world, in a dale without a railway, their souls had received a sprinkling from the spray of that huge breaker of the nineteenth century spirit which we call progress. How it had reached them it would have been hard to say, but perhaps the very silence and monotony of their existence had enabled them to hear its thunder as it rolled onward,

In lapses huge, and solemn roar, Ever on, without a shore." Certain it was that they had heard it, had been baptized with some drops of its potent brine, and that thoughts and speculations disturbed their minds, which would never have entered hers; that things which to her formed the summum bonum of existence, caused them no pang by their absence. While she was always lamenting their want of money, their absence of chances,' they cried out that they had no work; nothing to do. She wanted them to be married; they wished to have employment. The difference of aim and opinion was a deep and radical one; it marked a profound dissimilarity in the mental constitutions of mother and daughter; it was a constant jar, and a breach which threatened to grow wider.

66

She knew that this morning Judith and Delphine would have a weighty confabulation upon certain points which would not be submitted to her; that aspects of the Irkford visit would be described and dwelt upon, of which she would never hear anything. She accused her girls in her own mind of reserve and secretiveness, oblivious of the fact that she never gave an opinion upon their aspirations in the matter of work, save to condemn them.

Mrs. Conisbrough watched them ast

66

they left the house, and went up the street toward the hill in whose recesses High Gill was hidden-three as lovely, lissom figures as a mother's heart could wish to see. She heaved a deep sigh. Her comely countenance looked clouded and downcast, and she shook her head. "God forgive me!" she thought within herself; sometimes I really wish he was dead, and all safe! Once in possession we should be right, I know. It is all absolutely his, and he can leave it as absolutely to us. No one could set aside any will that he chose to make. Besides, anything else, after all this time, and after all that he has promised, would be so hideously unnatural."

She went to her seat by the fire, and to a great basket of household linen, every article of which required repair, for all the things at Yoresett House had been in use for many years, and nobody in the establishinent had much money wherewith to buy new ones.

The morning droned on, and she sat undisturbed in the breakfast parlor, whose windows looked, not upon the market-place, but to the back, over a delightful garden in which stood the big apple-tree beneath which Mr. Danesdale's dog had sat and watched Mrs. Conisbrough's cat; and beyond that, to delicious-looking, rounded, green hills, like those which form the background of some of Mr. Burne Jones's pictures. There were autumn woods, too, to be seen-a blaze of scarlet and gold, from which the mist had now completely cleared away. Deep in one of these woods was High Gill, the favorite resort of the girls. They loved to pass a summer afternoon or an autumn morning there, listening to the lulling roar of the water, and watching the rainbows made by the spray.

Profound silence throughout the old house, till at last there came the sound of horses' hoofs along the street outside -hoofs which paused before her door. "It must be Uncle John, I suppose, she thought, and very soon afterward he walked into the room, saluting her with the words,

"Well, Marion, good-day!" “Good-morning, uncle! How good of you to come and see me so soon! Sit down, and have a glass of wine." "No, thank you.

I won't trouble

your ever-generous hospitality," said the old man, and his smile, as he spoke, was a sinister one, bearing a great resemblance to Bernard's most malevolent grimace. His rugged eyebrows came down in a kind of penthouse over his eyes, effectually concealing their expression, save when they caught the light, and then there was that in them which was not the lambent glow of benevolence.

The old squire, as Aglionby was called in those parts, was not famed for the sweetness of his temper, nor for its certainty. Mrs. Conisbrough had experienced, ere now, specimens of the defectiveness of this temper; but though the men of the Aglionby race were not famed for the ingratiating amiability of their manners, she thought she had never seen her uncle look so uncompromisingly vindictive as he did now. She misliked, too, the suave and mellifluous accents in which he spoke, and which belied, the expression in his eyes.

46

Well, at least sit down and rest," she urged him. "The girls have all gone out for a walk." "Oh, have they? I hope Judith's safe return satisfied your maternal anxiety."

"I was not anxious about her, so long as I knew she was with you. She looked wonderfully brightened up by the little change. It was so kind of you to take her!"'

"Humph! If it doesn't make her discontented with the home-coming." "Oh, well-regulated minds-" I know how And

46

Like yours, Marion. admirably you were brought up. I am sure you have brought up your girls as well as ever you were brought up yourself. They are truthful, I think. They ought to be, with a parson for their father, and such a good woman as you for their mother. I am sure you have taught them the sinfulness of telling lies, haven't you, now?" "Lies-"

46

The last thing in the world, my dear, that I should think of. I was just saying that you were so well taught the wickedness of telling lies that you would be sure to bring up your daughters with a great respect for the truth. And then, having yourself been a parson's wife you look surprised, my dear," he added blandly. "It was your remark about well-regulated minds, and a humdrum life, which sent my thoughts upon this task. I'm sure you have taught your daughters the necessity and beauty of truthfulness."

"I hope I have indeed, uncle John. The world would be in a bad way without truthfulness, the most indispensable of moral virtues, I should call it."

"Ha, ha!" he burst out, and there was something so absolutely malignant in the tone of his laugh, that Mrs. Conisbrough looked at him, vaguely alarmed. "You never spoke a truer word, my dear. A bad way, indeed-a very bad way. All sorts of relations would be getting wrong with one another, and all sorts of injustice would reign rampant. Did you read the Tichborne case, when every one was interested in it ?"

“No-I never read newspapers. "That's a pity. There are so many interesting little scraps in them, such as ladies like. In the first place, of course, there are the births, marriages, and deaths, and then, for us men, the political news, and the leading articles you women don't care about such things, of course. But there are all kinds of bits of gossip that women do care for-such as long-lost sons turning up again, and all that kind of thing. That Tichborne case was the case of a man who called himself the rightful heir, you know."

"Yes, I think-of course I heard a great deal about it, though I didn't read it. But, you see, we only have a newspaper once a week," she faltered, turning pale, and pressing her hands against her heart.

He was remorseless.

"It is just in the weekly papers that they cull together the choicest morsels of that kind," he said, smiling unpleasantly. "You consult your paper next Saturday, and I'll warrant you'll find little bits that will interest you.'

He rose, and grasped his hat as if to go; held out his hand, and when she

nervously placed her own within it, clutched it in a grip of iron, so that her rings cut into her flesh, and staring into her face, with intent eyes, which seemed to flame with anger, said, in a rough harsh voice,

"Last Saturday afternoon I saw my grandson. Last Saturday evening I saw my grandson again. Yesterday morning I found him, and had a long conversation with him, and told him who I was."

"Oh-oh!" she cried faintly, and nerveless, pale, trembling, she would have sunk backward into her chair, but that the grip with which he held her hand, sustained her.

"He is not at all what I should have expected. He is very poor, and working hard at a warehouse, where he has to slave for a lot of d-d upstart tradesmen, who would kick him out of doors if he uttered a murmur. That's what he's been doing for years, ever since his mother died, and before that too. He may have wanted a sovereign, many a time, while I have been living in plenty! Ah! it's enough to turn one's brain.' "Ah! Loose my hand! Let me go !" she almost panted, as with laboring breath and disturbed visage she tried to get her hand free. "Uncle, you hurt me!" she at last cried petulantly, as if petulance would relieve the agony of her overstrained nerves. He laughed roughly, as he flung away, rather than loosed her hand, and continued in the same grimly jocular strain to banter her concerning her skeleton in the cupboard. She felt in her heart sickening qualms of fear, as he thus burst open the door as it were, took the spectre out, and dangled it relentlessly before her eyes, aghast as they were at the unexpected revelation.

66

Fancy what lies those relations of his must have told-that mother, you know," he went on. "I always said she was a graceless baggage, and she has deceived the lad himself to such an extent that he won't even hear a word in her dispraise. Some people are fools, Marion, and some are liars. That's just the difference in this world. a fool you must have been, once upon a time, to be duped as you were, for a liar you couldn't have been."

What

He turned toward the door, when she, suddenly springing up, ran after him,

seized his hand, and exclaimed, agony and apprehension, pleading and urgency, in her voice,

"Uncle John, be pitiful, I pray. Remember my poor girls! What are they to do? What will become of us all? Oh, miserable woman that I am, why was I ever born?"

Ah, why?" he retorted, almost brutally. "Being a parson's wife, you ought to know more about that than I do. As for me, I'm an old pagan, like a lot of those I knew in this dale when we were all young together, and if we had no Christian meekness, we were free from some Christian vices too-lying among them. Good-day, my dear."

He did not turn again, but went away, leaving her alone with her fears, her misery, and her humiliation.

"What does he mean?" she kept repeating, beating her hands together as she paced about the room. "What does he mean, and what does he intend to do? Why does he not speak out? It is enough to kill one to be kept in this agony of suspense. After all these years after all his promises, and all my servitude-no it cannot, cannot be! no, it cannot," she reiterated, catching her breath. "What could I tell him? Why did he not wait, instead of speaking to me in that manner, as if he wanted to tear the very heart out of my breast. How can any one speak, or explainhow can a nervous woman collect her self, with a man glaring at her more like a devil than a human being-mad with unreasoning rage! And then they talk about women having no self-command! Oh, if I dared, what a tale I could tell about men, and their boasted generosity to those who are weaker than themselves. I believe if I said what I thought, that I could make even a man blush-if that is possible. But I must not lose my self-command in this way,' she added, suddenly collecting and composing herself, and seating herself in her rocking-chair she swayed slightly to and fro, with clasped hands, and eyes fixed on the ground, lost in a painful, terrified calculation of chances.

"I must think, think, think about it," she thought within herself. "It is that thinking and calculating which wears me out more than anything else. Oh!" (as her mind, despite the neces

are.

sity for dwelling on the matter in hand, persistently reverted to its grief and woes). "This life is a hard, dreary business; and what brutes_men Hard, grasping wretches! They keep us in slavery. They hate to see us free, lest they should lose our blind submission to them; I know they do. If we try to make ourselves free, they grind us to powder. Judith and Delphine are right, yes, they are perfectly right in their principles, but they do not know, as I do, what will become of them if they carry those principles out. They talk about selling themselves, and the degradation of trying to please men that they may fall in love with them; but when they are as old as I am, and have lived through what I have, they will know that it is the only way for a woman to find a little ease and comfort in this world. It is the only thing to do, unless they want to be crushed to death for defying the universal law."

This was the form of reflection into which Mrs. Conisbrough's emotions usually crystallized after they had been deeply stirred, as this morning. She spoke as she felt. She loved ease, and hated discomfort, and nothing moved her so profoundly as the loss of the first, and as having to endure the second. Presently she somewhat calmed down, and when the girls came in from their stroll, she looked not very different from usual, though she was pale and silent. She gathered that they had been at the waterfall all the morning, and (implied, though not expressed) occupied, Judith and Delphine, in what Rhoda called "talking secrets." Immediately after dinner Mrs. Conisbrough retired to her own room, saying she felt tired, and wanted a rest. She did not mention their uncle's visit to the girls, who were thus left for the afternoon as well as for the morning to follow their own devices.

CHAPTER IX.

SCAR FOOT.

RHODA had put on an ancient straw hat and a pair of leather gloves, and gone to "do a little gardening." Judith and Delphine were alone in the parlor.

"Then you'll go?" said the latter. "I shall go this very afternoon. We have quite decided that it is the best,

and there is no use in delaying it. He was in a very good temper, and, for him, quite gentle all the time we were at Irkford. Yes, I shall go."

"The sky has turned gray, and it looks as if there might be a storm.'

"I'll put on my old things. I cannot wait."

"Well, God speed you, I say. I shall be trembling all the time until you return."

Judith ran up-stairs, and soon returned, equipped evidently for a long walk over a rough road, in strong boots, her skirt kilted conveniently high, and her soft rough hat on her head. Delphine came with her to the door, looking wistfully at her.

"Let me go, Judith!" she said suddenly. "It is always you who have the disagreeable things to do.'

"You, child! don't talk nonsense, and never fear. I am all right. Goodby!"

Delphine kissed her hand after her, and watched her down the sloping market-place, till she turned a bend in the road, and was lost to view. Judith lost to view. Judith stepped forward at a pace which carried her quickly over the ground. There was nothing of what is popularly known as masculine" in her movements, but they were free, graceful, and untrammelled she did not hobble on high heels, nor were her garments tied back in such a manner as to impede her every motion. Her gown followed the old Danesdale rule for what a gown should be-it was not long enough to catch the dirt, and it was walking width and striding sidth,' as a gown should be. The walk she had before her was one which required such a gown and such a chaussure as she wore--along a good country road, which kept pretty much on the level until she arrived at a brown, bleak-looking village, which had a weather-beaten appearance, a green in the centre, with five old horses grazing upon it. Then the road became a rough

one.

66

Beautiful, no doubt, in its varying charm of uphill and downhill, in the grand views of the high hills, and the long, bare-backed fells which spread

* That is, for walking, wide enough, and to spare, with space enough to stride in, if necessary, without being pulled up short at each

pace.

around on every side; with the white sinuous roads traced over them; roads which led over wild passes and lonely commons" to other valleys and dales, remoter even than this one. Lovely in spring, in summer; lovely, in a way, at every season, but, on this gray October afternoon, invested with a certain savage melancholy, a bleak desolation unnoticed, probably, by most of those who lived amid it, but which had its undoubted influence upon their habits and their characters, and which must have stirred an artist's heart, and set a poet's brain working in lines which he might have made as rough and abrupt as he chose, but which, to fully express the poetry of the scene, must have had in them something both of grandeur and of grace.

It was a strange, forsaken country, full of antique gray villages, which made no progress, and most of which appeared gradually falling into decay, inhabited by persons many of whom had never been even into the neighboring Swaledale. All this district, in the early days of English religious dissent, was a stronghold of the people called Quakers. Here and there, in unexpected places, in archaic-looking little towns, in tiny, half-forsaken hamlets, will be found some little square stone meeting-house, often incapable of holding more than from a dozen to twenty persons. There was such a meeting-house, though one rather more considerable in size, in the brown village through which Judith had passed, and in its dreary little yard were mouldering the bones of some of these stern old "Friends," unindicated even by a name, with nothing to show them save the grass-covered mound beneath which they lay. Sturdy spirits, Spartan souls they had been-spirits of the kind known in their day as God-fearing," a kind one seldom meets with and seldom hears of now. Looking round on the present race, one feels indeed that they would be hard set to comprehend those "God-fearing" men, or any of their works or ways, or to understand the spirit that breathed into and animated them. Emasculate orthodoxy faints away on the one hand in incense and altar bouquets of hothouse flowers; on the other, dilutes its intellect in the steam of tea-meetings," in the reek of