d timidity? Why, it was as
clear as noonday that the poor little man would try to avoid the
villages by making a circuit of the fields about them.

With this conviction, Robbie set out again, intending to make no pause
in his next stage until he had reached Kendal. Upon approaching the
villages he looked about for the footpaths that might be expected to
describe short arcs around them; and, following one of these, he
passed a cottage that stood at a corner of a lane. He had made many
fruitless inquiries hitherto, and had received replies that had been
worse than valueless; but he could not resist the temptation to ask at
this house.

Walking round the cottage to where the door opened on the front
farthest from the lane, Robbie entered the open porch. His unfamiliar
footstep brought from an inner room an old woman with a brown and
wrinkled face, who curtsied, and, speaking in a meek voice, asked, or
seemed to ask, his pleasure.

"Your pardon, mistress," said Robbie, "but mayhap you've seen a little
man with gray hair and a long beard going by?"

"Do you say a laal man?" asked the old woman.

"Ey, wrinkled and wizzent a bit?" said Robbie.

"Yes," said the woman.

Robbie was uncertain as to what the affirmation implied. Taking it to
be a sort of request for a more definite description, he continued,--

"A blate and fearsome sort of a fellow, you know."

"Yes," repeated the woman, and then there was a pause.

Robbie, getting impatient of the delay, was turning on his heel with
scant civility, when the old woman said, "Are you seeking him for
aught that is good?"

"Why, ey, mother," said Robbie, regaining his former position and his
accustomed geniality in an instant. "Do you know his name?" she asked.

"Sim--that's to say Sim Stagg. Don't you fear me, mother; I'm a friend
to Sim, take my word."

"You're a good-like sort of a lad, I think," said the old woman; "Sim
was here ower the night last night."

"Where is he now?" said Robbie.

"He left me this morning at t' edge o' t' daylight. He axed for t'
coach to Lancaster, and I telt him it started frae the Woodman, in
Kirklands, and so he went off there."

"Kirklands; where's Kirklands?"

"In Kendal, near the church."

It turned out that the good old woman had known Sim many years before,
when they were neighbors in a street of a big town. She had been with
Sim's wife in her last illness, and had cared for his little daughter
when the child's mother die