umped down into the road, and Jack was standing, with
the reins in his hand, anxiously peering into her face.

'Eh, Bryda, will that suit you?'

'Thank you, Jack. Yes, I will have the letter ready. But will your
mother be angry?'

'Lor'! why should she? But if she is, it's no odds to me. I say, Bryda,
give me--'

But before Jack could finish his sentence Bryda was gone.

She found things at the farm going on much as usual.

The butter was made, the noonday dinner cleared away, Dorothy 'cleaned
up' for the afternoon, and seated at the table cutting up some bits of
old printed calico for a patchwork quilt.

When she caught sight of Bryda at the open door she called out,--

'Where have you been to? Dinner is done an hour ago. P'r'aps you have
had yours at Mistress Henderson's?' This with a sniff of contempt. 'You
are mighty partial to these Hendersons, I know I can't abide them.'

Instead of taking any notice of these remarks, Bryda asked,--

'Where's grandfather?'

'At his business, of course. Another lamb is dead, and another ewe past
hope. Everything is gone crooked. The last brood of chicks are dying
fast as they can. It's all along with Goody Fenton's evil eye. I said so
when she sat in the porch Lady-day. I told you you was feeding a bad old
woman, and I was right.'

Bryda gave a little incredulous laugh.

'I should feed her again,' she said, 'if she came this way, poor
miserable old creature!'

'Wicked old wretch, she'll end in the ducking stool, and serve her
right. I'd like to be by and see it, that's all.'

Bryda's imaginative nature had a vein of superstition in it. She was not
altogether sure that witchcraft had died out of the land, and she rather
liked to hear the stories of elves and fairies, good spirits which made
those dark rings on the turf by their dances, when all the rest of the
world were asleep.

There was a fascination for her in the notion of a world of little
mysterious fairies, who cradled themselves in the deep blue bells of the
campanules, and lay in the heart of the tall white lilies, powdering
their airy garments with gold, and flying through the air of the still
summer nights on the backs of the shy, spotted moths which blundered
over the moor, when none were there to see, in chase of a
will-of-the-wisp, whose lantern, darting hither and thither, lured them
on. She stood thinking for a moment over all the run of ill luck to
which Dorothy referred, and then her thoughts w