roof."

"It has a bend in the middle, like a broken back. I must sketch it,"
said Dora.

"Why, there's Edmund, getting over the churchyard stile."

"Ay, he can't keep long away from you, Madam Mary."

"Were you going to the workhouse?" said Captain Carbonel, coming up, and
offering an arm to each lady, as was the fashion in those days.

"We thought of it. All the poorest people are there, of course."

"And the worst," said the captain. "No, I will not have you go there.
It is not fit for you."

For besides that he was very particular about his ladies, and had no
notion of letting them go to all the varieties of evil where they could
hope to do good, like the ladies of our days, the workhouse was an
utterly different place from the strictly disciplined union houses of
the present Poor Law. Each parish had its own, and that of Uphill had
no master, no order, but was the refuge of all the disorderly,
disreputable people, who could not get houses, or pay their rent, who
lived in any kind of fashion, on parish pay and what they could get, and
were under no restraint.

While the captain was explaining to them what he had heard from Farmer
Goodenough, a sudden noise of shouting and laughing, with volleys of
evil words, was heard near the "Fox and Hounds."

"What is that?" asked Dora, of a tidy young woman coming her way.

"That's only the chaps at old Sam," she answered, as if it was an
ordinary sound. And on them exclaiming, she explained. "Samson
Sanderson, that's his name, sir. He be what they calls _non-compos_,
and the young fellows at the `Fox and Hounds' they have their fun out of
he. They do bait he shameful."

Violent shouts of foul words and riotous laughter could be distinguished
so plainly, that Captain Carbonel hastily thrust his wife and sister
into the nearest cottage, and marched into the group of rough men and
boys, who stood holloaing rude jokes, and laughing at the furious oaths
and abuse in intermittent gasps with which they were received.

"For shame!" his indignant voice broke in. "Are you not ashamed,
unmanly fellows, to treat a poor weak lad in this way?"

There was a moment's silence. Then a great hulking drover called out,
"Bless you, sir, he likes it."

"The more shame for you," exclaimed the captain, "to bait a poor
innocent lad with horrid blasphemy and profanity. I tell you every one
of you ought to be fined!"

The men began to sneak away from the indignant soldier. T