ly
examined, an habitual observer might have found much to qualify, perhaps
to disturb, his first prepossessions. The exceeding lowness of the
forehead, over which that stiff, harsh hair was so puritanically
parted; the severe hardness of those thin, small lips, so pursed up
and constrained; even a certain dull cruelty in those light, cold blue
eyes,--might have caused an uneasy sentiment, almost approaching to
fear. The fat grocer's spoilt child instinctively recoiled from her
when she entered the shop to make her household purchases; the old,
gray-whiskered terrier dog at the public-house slunk into the tap when
she crossed the threshold.

Madame Dalibard silently suffered herself to be wheeled into the
adjoining bedroom, and the process of disrobing was nearly completed
before she said abruptly,--

"So you attended Mr. Varney's uncle in his last illness. Did he suffer
much?"

"He was a poor creature at best," answered Martha; "but he gave me a
deal of trouble afore he went. He was a scranny corpse when I strecked
him out."

Madame Dalibard shrank from the hands at that moment employed upon
herself, and said,--

"It was not, then, the first corpse you have laid out for the grave?"

"Not by many."

"And did any of those you so prepared die of the same complaint?"

"I can't say, I'm sure," returned Martha. "I never inquires how folks
die; my bizness was to nurse 'em till all was over, and then to sit up.
As they say in my country, 'Riving Pike wears a hood when the weather
bodes ill.'" [If Riving Pike do wear a hood, The day, be sure, will
ne'er be good. A Lancashire Distich.]

"And when you sat up with Mr. Varney's uncle, did you feel no fear in
the dead of the night,--that corpse before you, no fear?"

"Young Mr. Varney said I should come to no harm. Oh, he's a clever man!
What should I fear, ma'am?" answered Martha, with a horrid simplicity.

"You have belonged to a very religious sect, I think I have heard you
say,--a sect not unfamiliar to me; a sect to which great crime is very
rarely known?"

"Yes, ma'am, some of 'em be tame enough, but others be weel [whirlpool]
deep!"

"You do not believe what they taught you?"

"I did when I was young and silly."

"And what disturbed your belief?"

"Ma'am, the man what taught me, and my mother afore me, was the first I
ever kep' company with," answered Martha, without a change in her florid
hue, which seemed fixed in her cheek, as the red in an autumn lea