h the sagacious eye of a wizard, "I knew you would come! and
Giacomo is already prepared for you! As to wages, we'll talk of them
by-and-by."

Lenny being thus settled, his mother looked for some evenings on the
vacant chair, where he had so long sate in the place of her beloved
Mark; and the chair seemed so comfortless and desolate, thus left all to
itself, that she could bear it no longer.

Indeed the village had grown as distasteful to her as to Lenny--perhaps
more so; and one morning she hailed the Steward as he was trotting his
hog-maned cob beside the door, and bade him tell the Squire that "she
would take it very kind if he would let her off the six months' notice
for the land and premises she held--there were plenty to step into the
place at a much better rent."

"You're a fool," said the good-natured Steward; "and I'm very glad you
did not speak to that fellow Stirn instead of to me. You've been doing
extremely well here, and have the place, I may say, for nothing."

"Nothin' as to rent, sir, but a great deal as to feeling," said the
widow. "And now Lenny has gone to work with the foreign gentleman, I
should like to go and live near him."

"Ah, yes--I heard Lenny had taken himself off to the Casino--more fool
he; but, bless your heart, 'tis no distance--two miles or so. Can't he
come home every night after work?"

"No, sir," exclaimed the widow almost fiercely; "he shan't come home
here, to be called bad names and jeered at!--he whom my dead good man
was so fond and proud of. No, sir; we poor folks have our feelings, as I
said to Mrs. Dale, and as I will say to the Squire hisself. Not that I
don't thank him for all favors--he be a good gentleman if let alone; but
he says he won't come near us till Lenny goes and axes pardin. Pardin
for what, I should like to know? Poor lamb! I wish you could ha' seen
his nose, sir--as big as your two fists. Ax pardin! If the Squire had
had such a nose as that, I don't think it's pardin he'd been ha' axing.
But I let's the passion get the better of me--I humbly beg you'll excuse
it, sir. I'm no scollard, as poor Mark was, and Lenny would have been,
if the Lord had not visited us otherways. Therefore just get the Squire
to let me go as soon as may be; and as for the bit o' hay and what's on
the grounds and orchard, the new-comer will no doubt settle that."

The Steward, finding no eloquence of his could induce the widow to
relinquish her resolution, took her message to the