fferent owners before they came from a stall in Malsham
market to the house of Whitelaw, a grim-looking old quarto upon domestic
medicine, and a cookery-book, formed the entire library. When the duties
of the day were done, and the local weekly newspaper had been read--an
intellectual refreshment which might be fairly exhausted in ten
minutes--there remained nothing to beguile the hours but the perpetual
stitch--stitch--stitch of an industriously-disposed sempstress; and the
two women used to sit throughout the long afternoons with their
work-baskets before them, talking a little now and then of the most
commonplace matters, but for the greater part of their time silent.
Sometimes, when the heavy burden of Mrs. Tadman's society, and the
clicking of needles and snipping of scissors, grew almost unendurable,
Ellen would run out of the house for a brief airing in the garden, and
walk briskly to and fro along the narrow pathway between the potatoes and
cabbages, thinking of her dismal life, and of the old days at the Grange
when she had been full of gaiety and hope. There was not perhaps much
outward difference in the two lives. In her father's house she had worked
as hard as she worked now; but she had been free in those days, and the
unknown future all before her, with its chances of happiness. Now, she
felt like some captive who paces the narrow bounds of his prison-yard,
without hope of release or respite, except in death.

This particular spring day had begun brightly, the morning had been sunny
and even warm; but now, as the afternoon wore away, there were dark
clouds, with a rising wind and a sharp gusty shower every now and then.
Ellen took a solitary turn in the garden between the showers. It was
market-day; Stephen Whitelaw was not expected home till tea-time, and the
meal was to be eaten at a later hour than usual.

The rain increased as the time for the farmer's return drew nearer. He
had gone out in the morning without his overcoat, Mrs. Tadman remembered,
and was likely to get wet through on his way home, unless he should have
borrowed some extra covering at Malsham. His temper, which of late had
been generally at its worst, would hardly be improved by this annoyance.

There was a very substantial meal waiting for him: a ponderous joint of
cold roast beef, a dish of ham and eggs preparing in the kitchen, with an
agreeable frizzling sound, a pile of hot buttered cakes kept hot upon the
oven top; but there was