oved it clearly to be a hair from some woman's
head. She drew it off the pillow, and took it to the window; there
holding it out she looked fixedly at it, and became utterly lost in
meditation: her gaze, which had at first actively settled on the hair,
involuntarily dropped past its object by degrees and was lost on the
floor, as the inner vision obscured the outer one.

She at length moistened her lips, returned her eyes to the hair, wound
it round her fingers, put it in some paper, and secreted the whole in
her pocket. Mrs. Crickett's thoughts were with her work no more that
morning.

She searched the house from roof-tree to cellar, for some other trace of
feminine existence or appurtenance; but none was to be found.

She went out into the yard, coal-hole, stable, hay-loft, green-house,
fowl-house, and piggery, and still there was no sign. Coming in again,
she saw a bonnet, eagerly pounced upon it; and found it to be her own.

Hastily completing her arrangements in the other rooms, she entered the
village again, and called at once on the postmistress, Elizabeth Leat,
an intimate friend of hers, and a female who sported several unique
diseases and afflictions.

Mrs. Crickett unfolded the paper, took out the hair, and waved it on
high before the perplexed eyes of Elizabeth, which immediately mooned
and wandered after it like a cat's.

'What is it?' said Mrs. Leat, contracting her eyelids, and stretching
out towards the invisible object a narrow bony hand that would have been
an unmitigated delight to the pencil of Carlo Crivelli.

'You shall hear,' said Mrs. Crickett, complacently gathering up the
treasure into her own fat hand; and the secret was then solemnly
imparted, together with the accident of its discovery.

A shaving-glass was taken down from a nail, laid on its back in the
middle of a table by the window, and the hair spread carefully out upon
it. The pair then bent over the table from opposite sides, their elbows
on the edge, their hands supporting their heads, their foreheads nearly
touching, and their eyes upon the hair.

'He ha' been mad a'ter my lady Cytherea,' said Mrs. Crickett, 'and 'tis
my very belief the hair is--'

'No 'tidn'. Hers idn' so dark as that,' said Elizabeth.

'Elizabeth, you know that as the faithful wife of a servant of the
Church, I should be glad to think as you do about the girl. Mind I
don't wish to say anything against Miss Graye, but this I do say, that I
believe her