lla near
Surbiton. Devout as Mr. Ablethorpe, this good woman had taken an idea
of bringing the Orrins to more settled ways.

Aphra was to be cook and housekeeper, Honorine sewing maid, Camilla
waited at table, and Sidonia became laundress. It was a hospitable and
kindly arrangement. But the operations of Jeremy, who had charge of
the small garden, brought all the dogs of the neighbourhood there to
scratch, while within doors the entire service of the household would
be interrupted by discussions as to what the exact meaning of a pinch
of salt spilled on the right side of the salt cellar, or a tug of war
between the younger sisters to decide who was to clean the knives.

As all had foreseen but herself, Madame Funkel had to call in the
police before she could get rid of her troop of domestics. It ended in
their retreat, after certain threats on Aphra's part--threats which,
but for the opportune vanishing of Jeremy, might not have ended
pleasantly for their ex-mistress.

Aphra returned to her diminished shoe shop, this time set up in a
suburb of Leeds, and Jeremy was next heard of as the companion of Mr.
Hobby Stennis in the little wayside cottage where he lived before
moving into the larger and more retired Deep Moat Grange.

Honorine asked Jeremy more than once how he came to be acquainted with
Mr. Stennis. But his only reply was that "there were certain things
which it was good for women to know, but how he first came to meet Mr.
Stennis was not one of them."

CHAPTER XXIV

THE BREAKING DAM

(_The Narrative continued by Joe Yarrow._)

I have given this part of Elsie's diary in full, as she wrote it out,
both because she was so far from the truth as to what was happening
above ground, and because her style of writing is so literary--far
before mine, with words that I should have to look out in the
dictionary.

Why, of course, there was no end of a rumpage. The whole country rose.
It is the third time that tells. You never saw anything like it.
Farmers and their men flocked in from the field, and took shot guns and
hay forks, or tied scythes to poles, making ugly enough weapons. The
village of Breckonside emptied itself. It chanced that a little boy,
Frankie Leslie, on his way to school, had seen "eour teacha," as he
called Elsie, in the company of a tall woman in black going through the
pastures towards the woods of the Deep Moat.

That was enough. That was evidence at last. There was to be