he members of it. He left home for a
few days without the least anxiety. And Mr Harford, too, went on the
Monday to attend a college meeting at Oxford, and would not return till
he had visited his patient lady-love. The Selbys were away, spending
the autumn at Cheltenham.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

A NIGHT JOURNEY.

"And he must post, without delay,
Along the bridge and through the dale.
And by the church and o'er the down."
_Wordsworth_.

John Hewlett had finished his day's work, and come home in the dusk of
an October evening. He found the house hung all over with the family
linen, taken in to shelter from a shower; but not before it had become
damp enough to need to be put by the fire before it could be ironed or
folded. His mother was moaning over it, and there was no place to sit
down. He did not wonder that Jem had taken his hunch of bread and gone
away with it, nor that his father was not at home; but he took off his
boots at the back door, as his aunt never liked his coming into her room
in them--though they were nothing to what he would have worn had he
worked in the fields--and then climbed up the stairs.

Judith was sitting up in bed, with her teapot, tea-cup, and a piece of
stale loaf, laid out on a tray before her; and little Judy beside her,
drinking out of a cracked mug. Judith's eyes had a strange look of
fright in them, but there was an air of relief when she saw Johnnie.

"Well, aunt, is that all you have got for tea?"

"Poor mother has been hindered; but never mind that," returned Judith,
in a quick, agitated tone. "Judy, my dear, drink up your tea and run
down to help mother, there's a dear."

"You haven't brought nothing, Johnnie," Judy lingered to ask.

"No, not I. I've worked too late to go to shop," said Johnnie.

"Go down, my dear, as I told you," said Judith, with a little unwonted
tone of impatience, which made the youth certain that she had something
important to tell him; and as soon as the little girl began clumping
down the stairs, she held out her hand and said in the lowest of voices,
"Come near, Johnnie, that you may hear." He came near; she put out her
hand to pull him on his knees, so that his ear might be close to her,
and whispered, "Jack Swing is coming to Greenhow to-morrow."

"The captain away! How do you know?"

"A man came and talked with your father in the back garden--just under
this window. Mother had run up to shop for a bit of soap; but they