Martinmas, and gone many miles away towards
Horncastle. Bessy Corney, it is true was married and left behind in
the neighbourhood; but with her Sylvia had never been intimate; and
what girlish friendship there might have been between them had
cooled very much at the time of Kinraid's supposed death three years
before.

One day before Christmas in this year, 1798, Sylvia was called into
the shop by Coulson, who, with his assistant, was busy undoing the
bales of winter goods supplied to them from the West Riding, and
other places. He was looking at a fine Irish poplin dress-piece when
Sylvia answered to his call.

'Here! do you know this again?' asked he, in the cheerful tone of
one sure of giving pleasure.

'No! have I iver seen it afore?'

'Not this, but one for all t' world like it.'

She did not rouse up to much interest, but looked at it as if trying
to recollect where she could have seen its like.

'My missus had one on at th' party at John Foster's last March, and
yo' admired it a deal. And Philip, he thought o' nothing but how he
could get yo' just such another, and he set a vast o' folk agait for
to meet wi' its marrow; and what he did just the very day afore he
went away so mysterious was to write through Dawson Brothers, o'
Wakefield, to Dublin, and order that one should be woven for yo'.
Jemima had to cut a bit off hers for to give him t' exact colour.'

Sylvia did not say anything but that it was very pretty, in a low
voice, and then she quickly left the shop, much to Coulson's
displeasure.

All the afternoon she was unusually quiet and depressed.

Alice Rose, sitting helpless in her chair, watched her with keen
eyes.

At length, after one of Sylvia's deep, unconscious sighs, the old
woman spoke:

'It's religion as must comfort thee, child, as it's done many a one
afore thee.'

'How?' said Sylvia, looking up, startled to find herself an object
of notice.

'How?' (The answer was not quite so ready as the precept had been.)
'Read thy Bible, and thou wilt learn.'

'But I cannot read,' said Sylvia, too desperate any longer to
conceal her ignorance.

'Not read! and thee Philip's wife as was such a great scholar! Of a
surety the ways o' this life are crooked! There was our Hester, as
can read as well as any minister, and Philip passes over her to go
and choose a young lass as cannot read her Bible.'

'Was Philip and Hester----'

Sylvia paused, for though a new curiosity had dawned upon her