sympathy
of the artist and the forgiveness of the historian in making two or
three trifling legal anachronisms that do not interfere with the
interest of the narrative. The year of the story is given, but the aim
has been to reflect in these pages the black cloud of the whole period
of the Restoration as it hung over England's remotest solitudes. In my
rude sketch of the beginnings of the Quaker movement I must disclaim
any intention of depicting the precise manners or indicating the exact
doctrinal beliefs of the revivalists. If, however, I have described
the Quakers as singing and praying with the fervor of the Methodists,
it must not be forgotten that Quietism was no salient part of the
Quakerism of Fox; and if I have hinted at Calvinism, it must be
remembered that the "dividing of God's heritage" was one of the causes
of the first schism in the Quaker Society.

H.C.

New Court, Lincoln's Inn.

THE SHADOW OF A CRIME.

CHAPTER I. THE CITY OF WYTHBURN.

Tar-ry woo', tar-ry woo',
Tar-ry woo' is ill to spin:
Card it weel, card it weel,
Card it weel ere you begin. _Old Ballad._

The city of Wythburn stood in a narrow valley at the foot of
Lauvellen, and at the head of Bracken Water. It was a little but
populous village, inhabited chiefly by sheep farmers, whose flocks
grazed on the neighboring hills. It contained rather less than a
hundred houses, all deep thatched and thick walled. To the north lay
the mere, a long and irregular water, which was belted across the
middle by an old Roman bridge of bowlders. A bare pack-horse road
wound its way on the west, and stretched out of sight to the north and
to the south. On this road, about half a mile within the southernmost
extremity of Bracken Water, two hillocks met, leaving a natural
opening between them and a path that went up to where the city stood.
The dalesmen called the cleft between the hillocks the city gates; but
why the gates and why the city none could rightly say. Folks had
always given them these names. The wiser heads shook gravely as they
told you that city should be sarnty, meaning the house by the
causeway. The historians of the plain could say no more.

They were rude sons and daughters of the hills who inhabited this
mountain home two centuries ago. The country around them was alive
with ghostly legend. They had seen the lights dance across Deer Garth
Ghyll, and had heard the wail that came from Clark's L