.'

'It was begun by my father and his, who were brother-laws.'

Her companion could not blind himself to the fact that where tastes and
pursuits were so akin as Lizzy's and Owlett's, and where risks were
shared, as with them, in every undertaking, there would be a peculiar
appropriateness in her answering Owlett's standing question on matrimony
in the affirmative. This did not soothe Stockdale, its tendency being
rather to stimulate in him an effort to make the pair as inappropriate as
possible, and win her away from this nocturnal crew to correctness of
conduct and a minister's parlour in some far-removed inland county.

They had been walking near enough to the file of carriers for Stockdale
to perceive that, when they got into the road to the village, they split
up into two companies of unequal size, each of which made off in a
direction of its own. One company, the smaller of the two, went towards
the church, and by the time that Lizzy and Stockdale reached their own
house these men had scaled the churchyard wall, and were proceeding
noiselessly over the grass within.

'I see that Owlett has arranged for one batch to be put in the church
again,' observed Lizzy. 'Do you remember my taking you there the first
night you came?'

'Yes, of course,' said Stockdale. 'No wonder you had permission to
broach the tubs--they were his, I suppose?'

'No, they were not--they were mine; I had permission from myself. The
day after that they went several miles inland in a waggon-load of manure,
and sold very well.'

At this moment the group of men who had made off to the left some time
before began leaping one by one from the hedge opposite Lizzy's house,
and the first man, who had no tubs upon his shoulders, came forward.

'Mrs. Newberry, isn't it?' he said hastily.

'Yes, Jim,' said she. 'What's the matter?'

'I find that we can't put any in Badger's Clump to-night, Lizzy,' said
Owlett. 'The place is watched. We must sling the apple-tree in the
orchet if there's time. We can't put any more under the church lumber
than I have sent on there, and my mixen hev already more in en than is
safe.'

'Very well,' she said. 'Be quick about it--that's all. What can I do?'

'Nothing at all, please. Ah, it is the minister!--you two that can't do
anything had better get indoors and not be zeed.'

While Owlett thus conversed, in a tone so full of contraband anxiety and
so free from lover's jealousy, the men who followed h