eorge to Polly's departure, and
seeing the lad was amused and comfortable, she started with Luke, Dick
taking his place near the bed, where he could also enjoy a look at the
pictures.

"Did you notice that pretty girl with the sweet voice in the aisle in
a line with us, father," Ned asked that evening, "with a great, strong,
quiet looking man by the side of her?"

"Yes, lad, the sweetness of her singing attracted my attention, and I
thought what a bright, pretty face it was!"

"That's Mary Powlett and her uncle. You have heard me speak of her as
the girl who was so kind in nursing Bill."

"Indeed, Ned! I should scarcely have expected to find so quiet and tidy
looking a girl at Varley, still less to meet her with a male relation in
church."

"She lives at Varley, but she can hardly be called a Varley girl," Ned
said. "Bill was telling me about her. Her uncle had her brought up down
here. She used to go back to sleep at night, but otherwise all her time
was spent here. It seems her mother never liked the place, and married
away from it, and when she and her husband died and the child came back
to live with her uncle he seemed to think he would be best carrying out
his dead sister's wishes by having her brought up in a different way to
the girls at Varley. He has lost his wife now, and she keeps house for
him, and Bill says all the young men in Varley are mad about her, but
she won't have anything to say to them."

"She is right enough there," Captain Sankey said smilingly. "They are
mostly croppers, and rightly or wrongly--rightly, I am afraid--they
have the reputation of being the most drunken and quarrelsome lot in
Yorkshire. Do you know the story that is current among the country
people here about them?"

"No, father, what is it?"

"Well, they say that no cropper is in the place of punishment. It was
crowded with them at one time, but they were so noisy and troublesome
that his infernal majesty was driven to his wits' end by their disputes.
He offered to let them all go. They refused. So one day he struck upon
a plan to get rid of them. Going outside the gates he shouted at the top
of his voice, 'Beer, beer, who wants beer?' every cropper in the place
rushed out, and he then slipped in again and shut the gates, and has
taken good care ever since never to admit a cropper into his territory."

Ned laughed at the story.

"It shows at any rate, father, what people think of them here; but I
don't think they are