h.
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CLARE AVERY, BY EMILY SARAH HOLT.

CHAPTER ONE.

LITTLE CLARE'S FIRST HOME.

"The mossy marbles rest
On the lips he hath pressed
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb."

_Oliver Wendell Holmes_.

"Cold!" said the carrier, blowing on his fingers to keep them warm.

"Cold, bully Penmore!" ejaculated Hal Dockett,--farrier, horse-leech,
and cow-doctor in ordinary to the town of Bodmin and its
neighbourhood... "Lack-a-daisy! thou that hast been carrier these
thirty years, and thy father afore thee, and his father afore him, ever
sith `old Dick Boar' days, shouldst be as hard as a milestone by this
time. 'Tis the end of March, fellow!"

Be it known that "old Dick Boar" was Mr Dockett's extremely irreverent
style of allusion to His Majesty King Richard the Third.

"'Tis the end of as bitter a March as hath been in Cornwall these
hundred years," said the carrier. "Whither away now, lad?"

"Truly, unto Bradmond, whither I am bidden to see unto the black cow."

"Is it sooth, lad, that the master is failing yonder?"

"Folk saith so," replied Hal, his jocund face clouding over. "It shall
be an evil day for Bodmin, _that_!"

"Ay so!" echoed the carrier. "Well! we must all be laid in earth one
day. God be wi' thee, lad!"

And with a crack of his whip, the waggon lumbered slowly forward upon
the Truro road, while Dockett went on his way towards a house standing a
little distance on the left, in a few acres of garden, with a paddock
behind.

About the cold there was no question. The ground, which had been white
with snow for many days, was now a mixture of black and white, under the
influence of a thaw; while a bitterly cold wind, which made everybody
shiver, rose now and then to a wild whirl, slammed the doors, and
groaned through the wood-work. A fragment of cloud, rather less dim and
gloomy than the rest of the heavy grey sky, was as much as could be seen
of the sun.

Nor was the political atmosphere much more cheerful than the physical.
All over England,--and it might be said, all over Europe,--men's hearts
were failing them for fear,--by no means for the first time in that
century. In Holland the Spaniards, vanquished not by men, but by winds
and waves from God, had abandoned the siege of Leyden; and the
sovereignty of the Netherlands had been offered to E