zzled. "He
has not lost the power of uttering sound."

"No, no, my Lady," said Mrs. Fry very confidently. "He can scream and
holly loud enough. I bate mun last night, poor soul, because he
wouldn't spake, and he scritched so loud that Mrs. Mugford come in, and
asked me what I was 'bout killing a pig at that time o' night; though
she knows very well that it was my pig that was drownded in the
mill-leat back along in the spring. So I says to her, 'Mrs. Mugford,'
I says, 'if those that talks about pigs would look to their own boys,
they wouldn't run off to sea and come home with the shakums,' I says;
'and if they would keep their fowls from scratting about in their
neighbours' gardens,' I says, 'they wouldn't run about crying for lost
chimases.' For there's hardly a day but I drive her fowls from my
garden, my Lady. And you mind her son, my Lady, him that went for a
marine, and what terrible shakums he had when he comed back from the
Injies. And I consider that they stolen chimases is a jidgment, my
Lady, a jidgment for the mischief her fowls have done in my garden--"

"Stop, stop," said Lady Eleanor, whose eye had wandered to a shady spot
under the trees where the Corporal was lunging a steady old Exmoor pony
round and round, while Dick, with a pair of long gaiters added to his
attire, sat firmly on its back, though without saddle or stirrups.
"Tell me; has anything happened to the boy to frighten him?"

"Well, my Lady," answered Mrs. Fry, "I consider myself that the boy's
overlooked."

"Overlooked?" said Lady Eleanor.

"Yes, my Lady. For they do tell me that the woman that comed through
the village yesterday with the mazed body told my Tommy, 'You don't
spake again,' she says, 'till I tell 'ee.'"

"Oh! nonsense," said Lady Eleanor, "don't think of such stuff."

"But she _did_," persisted Mrs. Fry, "and sure enough the boy can't
spake. She's overlooked mun! she's awitched mun, you may depend, my
Lady. And I'm sure if you'd a known who they two was, you wouldn't
never have let mun go. She's the old witch to Cossacombe, that's what
she is, though she a'nt never been this way afore, and the man's as bad
as she is, I'll be bound, though I never heard tell of he afore."

"Why, it was easy to see that he was but a poor half-witted creature,"
said Lady Eleanor, "as harmless as a child; his mother told me that she
hardly let him out of her sight."

"Well, my Lady, 'tis all very well to say that the man's maz