ve changed her laughter
to tears," she began. "But time enough for that. Can you list to me for an
hour, Charity? I'm in cruel trouble, look where I will, and if there's any
way out, I'll be very glad to pay good money to know it."

"Let me put the paste 'pon this here pie, then I'll hear what you've got
to grumble at," answers the wise woman; and five minutes later she sat
down and folded her hands and shut her eyes and heard what Sarah had got
to tell.

"When my husband was alive, he worked for Peter Hacker's father at
Bellaford, and lived in a little cottage on a newtake field a mile from
Bellaford Farm. Old Hacker often said to my husband that when he'd paid
rent for fifty year for the cottage, he'd let him have it for his own.
'Twas common knowledge that he intended to do it. But now, with my husband
dead in his grave--and he died just six months after he'd paid his
fiftieth year of rent, poor soul!--Peter Hacker have told me that the
cottage ban't to be mine at all, and that 'tis all rubbish, and not a
contract. I tell him that the ghost of my poor Thomas will turn his hair
grey for such wickedness; but you know Peter Hacker. Hard as the nether
millstone, and cruel as winter--with women. Very different, though, if a
brave man beards him. Now he's dunning me for two years' rent, and even
when I told him all that hangs on my keeping the cottage, he won't change
or hold to the solemn promise his father made my husband. In fact, he'll
turn me out at midsummer."

"And what do hang on your keeping the house?" asked Charity.

Mrs. White sniffed and cooled her tearful eyes with her handkercher.

"Johnny French hangs on it," she said, "We'm keeping it close till next
autumn, but he wants for to marry me, and we'm both lonely souls, and
we've both lost a good partner; and so it falls out very suent and
convenient like that we should wed. But now he hears tell as I ban't to
have the cottage, he's off it. He won't hear of marrying if there's no
cottage. So the fag end of my life's like to be ruined one way or
another."

"Let's see," says Charity, in her slow, quiet way. "Firstly, Peter
Hacker's dunning you for two years' rent and will turn you out if you
don't pay it; and secondly, he refuses to be bound by what his father
promised your Thomas long years afore you married; and thirdly, you'm
tokened to old Johnny French; but he won't take you if you're not to have
the cottage free gratis and for ever."

"That's how 't