here
in the name o' goodness have 'ee been?'

"'That's a long story,' said I, and then, feigning to speak
carelessly, though I heard my heart go thump--'How d'ye think
Trumpeter looks after the journey?'

"'Oh, _he's_ all right,' the old man replied indifferently; 'but come
along in to supper.'

"Now, my dear sir"--the schoolmaster thus concluded his tale,
tucking his umbrella tightly under his armpit, and tapping his right
forefinger on the palm of his left hand--"these pagans whom I teach
are as sensitive as I to ridicule. If I only knew how to take them--if
only I could lay my finger on the weak spot--I'd send their whole
fabric of silly superstitions tumbling like a house of cards."

This happened last Thursday week. Early this morning I crossed the
road as usual with my thermometer, and found a strip of pink calico
hanging from the brambles by the mouth of Scarlet's Well. I had seen
the pattern before on a gown worn by one of the villager's wives, and
knew the rag was a votive offering, hung there because her child, who
has been ailing all the winter, is now strong enough to go out into
the sunshine. As I bent the bramble carefully aside, before stooping
over the water, Lizzie Polkinghorne came up the lane and halted behind
me.

"Have 'ee heard the news?" she asked.

"No." I turned round, thermometer in hand.

"Why, Thomasine Slade's goin' to marry the schoolmaster! Their banns
'll be called first time nest Sunday."

We looked at each other, and she broke into a shout of laughter.
Lizzie's laugh is irresistible.

II.--SILHOUETTES.

The small rotund gentleman who had danced and spun all the way to
Gantick village from the extreme south of France, and had danced and
smiled and blown his flageolet all day in Gantick Street without
conciliating its population in the least, was disgusted. Towards dusk
he crossed the stile which divides Sanctuary Lane from the churchyard,
and pausing with a leg on either side of the rail, shook his fist back
at the village which lay below, its grey roofs and red chimneys just
distinguishable here and there between a foamy sea of apple-blossom
and a haze of bluish smoke. He could not well shake its dust off his
feet, for this was hardly separable on his boots from the dust of many
other villages, and also it was mostly mud. But his gesture betokened
extreme rancour.

"These Cor-rnishmen," he said, "are pigs all! There is not a
Cor-rnishman that is not a big pig!"

He l