ed like the morning dew."
(_Campbell--"Pleasures of Hope"_)

Although Penny's early history is not concerned with Ardmuirland or its
neighborhood, yet her long residence in the district will serve as an
excuse for its introduction here, apart from the fact of its undoubted
interest. Indeed, any account of Ardmuirland which should ignore so
prominent a figure in its social life would fail to give a perfect
picture of the place; yet but for the circumstances of her youthful
career Penny would never have appeared there at all. Her story, as given
here, is pieced together from knowledge gained at various times in
intimate conversation; in such a form it is more likely to meet with the
reader's appreciation than related in her own words.

Lanedon, in the Midlands, was a humble village enough half a century ago.
It lay low, amid gently swelling green hills, and was shaded by luxuriant
woodlands; out of the beaten track it slept in rustic seclusion,
undisturbed by the events of the outside world, its knowledge of such
things being confined to scraps of information which the local newspaper
might cull from more up-to-date journals.

It had but one street--if a single straggling line of dwellings along a
roadside might be so termed; on one side were cottages, each in its
embowering garden, and on the other ran a clear streamlet, which supplied
all the residents with abundance of fresh water. Besides these
habitations in the village proper, there were others, more pretentious,
though simple enough, in the shape of small farms situated in outlying
districts which claimed to belong to Lanedon parish, whose dwellers
worshiped in the little Norman church.

At one end of the village stood the "British Lion" public-house. It was
a quaint old homestead of two stories, with black, oaken interlacing
beams in its wattled walls and mullioned windows, retaining the small
diamond, leaded panes, long ago discarded by more pretentious
contemporaries. Before the door still stood an ancient horse-block,
which had served in its time to mount many a lady of olden days; for the
inn had once been of no little importance when stage-coaches plying
between London and the north, along the old Roman road, daily passed the
end of the lane leading to the village. Many a guest of quality, in
those days, spent a night in the "British Lion."

Opposite the inn door, on the other side of the road, a signboard swung
in a frame upheld by a m