s all round.'

'Your child,' says I; 'and may God forgive you!'

And I knew that he had seen her as I see her when my hands had
dressed her for her sleep through the long night.

I never have believed in ghosts, but there is no knowing what the
good Lord will allow.

So vengeance overtook him, and they carried him away to die with the
blood dropping on the gravel; and he never spoke a word again.

And when they lifted father up with the red knife still fast in his
hand, they found that he was dead, and his face was white and his
lips were blue, like as I had seen them before. And they all said
father must have been mad; and so he lies where he wished to lie,
and there's a place there where I shall lie some day, where father
lies, and mother, and my dear with her little baby in the hollow of
her arm.

GRANDSIRE TRIPLES

I WAS promised to William, in a manner of speaking, close upon seven
year. What I mean to say is, when he was nigh upon fourteen, and was
to go away to his uncle in Somerset to learn farming, he gave me a
kiss and half of a broken sixpence, and said--

'Kate, I shall never think of any girl but you, and you must never
think of any chap but me.'

And the Lord in His goodness knows that I never did.

Father and mother laughed a bit, and called it child's nonsense; but
they was willing enough for all that, for William was a likely chap,
and would be well-to-do when his good father died, which I am sure I
never wished nor prayed for. All the trouble come from his going to
Somerset to learn farming, for his uncle that was there was a Roman,
and he taught William a good deal more than he set out to learn, so
that presently nothing would do but William must turn Roman Catholic
himself. I didn't mind, bless you. I never could see what there was
to make such a fuss about betwixt the two lots of them. Lord love
us! we're all Christians, I should hope. But father and mother was
dreadful put out when the letter come saying William had been
'received' (like as if he was a parcel come by carrier). Father, he
says--

'Well, Kate, least said soonest mended. But I had rather see you
laid out on the best bed upstairs than I'd see you married to
William, a son of the Scarlet Woman.'

In my silly innocence I couldn't think what he meant, for William's
mother was a decent body, who wore a lilac print on week-days and a
plain black gown on Sunday for all she was a well-to-do farmer's
wife, and might ha