skin it,
She found--incredible surprise!--
She found the ring--was _not_ within it.

The next tale, called "The Woodman's Daughter," is a story of seduction,
madness, and child-murder. These are powerful materials to work with;
yet it is not every man's hand that they will suit. In the hands of
common-place, they are simply revolting. In the hands of folly and
affectation, their repulsiveness is aggravated by the simpering conceits
which usurp the place of the strongest passions of our nature. He only
is privileged to unveil these gloomy depths of erring humanity, who can
subdue their repulsiveness by touches of ethereal feeling; and whose
imagination, buoyant above the waves of passion, bears the heart of the
reader into havens of calm beauty, even when following the most
deplorable aberrations of a child of sin. Such a man is not Mr Patmore.
He has no imagination at all--or, what is the same thing, an imagination
which welters in impotence, far below the level of the emotions which it
ought to overrule. The pitfalls of his tale of misery are covered over
with thin sprinklings of asterisks--the poorest subterfuge of an
impoverished imagination; and besotted indeed is the senselessness with
which he disports himself around their margin. Maud, the victim, is the
daughter of Gerald, the woodman; and Merton, the seducer, is the son of
a rich squire in the neighbourhood. Maud used to accompany her father to
his employment in the woods.

"She merely went to think she help'd;
And whilst he hack'd and saw'd,
The rich squire's son, a young boy then,
For whole days, as if aw'd,
Stood by, and gazed alternately
At Gerald and at Maud.

"He sometimes, _in a sullen tone_,
Would offer fruits, and she
Always received his gifts with an air,
So unreserved and free,
That half-feign'd distance soon became
Familiarity.

"Therefore in time, when Gerald shook
The woods at his employ,
The young heir and the cottage-girl
Would steal out to enjoy
The music of each other's talk--
A simple girl and boy.

"They pass'd their time, both girl and boy,
Uncheck'd, unquestion'd; yet
They always hid their wanderings
By wood and rivulet,
Because they could not give themselves
A reason why they met.

--It may have been in the ancient time,
Before Love's earliest ban,
Psychean curiosity
Had