uppose your sweetheart John carries it?'

'Noa--disn't now--and Jan is no sweetheart of mine, ever since he danced
at his mother's feast with Kitty Rutlege, and let me sit still; that a
did.'

'It was most abominable in Jan, and what I could never have thought of
him,' I replied.

'Oh, but a did though--a let me sit still on my seat, a did.'

'Well, well, my pretty May, you will get a handsomer fellow than
Jan--Jan's not the fellow for you, I see that.'

'Noa, noa,' answered the damsel; 'but he is weel aneugh for a' that,
mon. But I carena a button for him; for there is the miller's son, that
suitored me last Appleby Fair, when I went wi' oncle, is a gway canny
lad as you will see in the sunshine.'

'Aye, a fine stout fellow. Do you think he would carry my letter to
Carlisle?'

'To Carloisle! 'Twould be all his life is worth; he maun wait on clap
and hopper, as they say. Odd, his father would brain him if he went to
Carloisle, bating to wrestling for the belt, or sic loike. But I ha'
more bachelors than him; there is the schoolmaster, can write almaist as
weel as tou canst, mon.'

'Then he is the very man to take charge of a letter; he knows the
trouble of writing one.'

'Aye, marry does he, an tou comest to that, mon; only it takes him four
hours to write as mony lines. Tan, it is a great round hand loike, that
one can read easily, and not loike your honour's, that are like midge's
taes. But for ganging to Carloisle, he's dead foundered, man, as cripple
as Eckie's mear.'

'In the name of God,' said I, 'how is it that you propose to get my
letter to the post?'

'Why, just to put it into Squire's bag loike,' reiterated Dorcas; 'he
sends it by Cristal Nixon to post, as you call it, when such is his
pleasure.'

Here I was, then, not much edified by having obtained a list of Dorcas's
bachelors; and by finding myself, with respect to any information
which I desired, just exactly at the point where I set out. It was of
consequence to me, however, to accustom, the girl to converse with me
familiarly. If she did so, she could not always be on her guard,
and something, I thought, might drop from her which I could turn to
advantage.

'Does not the Squire usually look into his letter-bag, Dorcas?' said I,
with as much indifference as I could assume.

'That a does,' said Dorcas; 'and a threw out a letter of mine to Raff
Miller, because a said'--

'Well, well, I won't trouble him with mine,' said I, 'Dorcas; but