duty, or more pious, could a hole like this perform, than
that of swallowing up a lawyer; or, if no such morsel offered, then at
least a lawyer's deeds? Many a sheep had been there ingulfed, and never
saluted by her lambs again; and although a lawyer by no means is a sheep
(except in his clothing, and his eyes perhaps), yet his doings appear
upon the skin thereof, and enhance its value more than drugs of Tyre.
And it is to be feared that some fleeced clients will not feel the
horror which they ought to feel at the mode pursued by Mistress Yordas
in the delivery of her act and deed.

She came down the dell, from the private grounds of Scargate, with a
resolute face, and a step of strength. The clock weight, that should
know time no more, was well imbosomed in the old deed-poll, and all
stitched firmly in the tough brown frail, whose handles would help for a
long strong cast. Towering crags, and a ridge of jagged scaurs, shut out
the sunset, while a thicket of dwarf oak, and the never-absent bramble,
aproned the yellow dugs of shale with brown. In the middle was the
caldron of the torrent, called the "Scarfe," with the sheer trap-rock,
which is green in the sunlight, like black night flung around it, while
a snowy wreath of mist (like foam exhaling) circled round the basined
steep, or hovered over the chasm.

Miss Yordas had very stanch nerves, but still, for reasons of her own,
she disliked this place, and never came near it for pleasure's sake,
although in dry summers, when the springs were low, the fury of the
scene passed into grandeur, and even beauty. But a Yordas (long ago gone
to answer for it) had flung a man, who plagued him with the law, into
this hole. And what was more disheartening, although of less importance,
a favorite maid of this lady, upon the exile of her sweetheart, hearing
that his feet were upside down to hers, and that this hole went right
through the earth, had jumped into it, in a lonely moment, instead of
taking lessons in geography. Philippa Yordas was as brave as need be;
but now her heart began to creep as coldly as the shadows crept.

For now she was out of sight of home, and out of hearing of any sound,
except the roaring of the force. The Hall was half a mile away, behind
a shoulder of thick-ribbed hill; and it took no sight of this torrent,
until it became a quiet river by the downward road. "I must be getting
old," Miss Yordas thought, "or else this path is much rougher than it
used t