?" Gwen left the old right hand free to show
her meaning, but it fell back after a languid effort. The strength was
near zero, though no one would have guessed it from the voice.

"Up _there_--in the roof--where the trap comes out.... Phoebe would not
come, because of the dust.... It was so hot too.... Barnaby pulled up a
flour-sack, to show me, and would have let me out on the trap, only I
was frightened, it was so high! I could see all the way over to
Braintree.... And Barnaby said on a clear day you could see St.
Paul's.... I liked Barnaby--I disliked old Muggeridge.... Do you know,
Phoebe dear, I used to think Barnaby's wife was old Muggeridge's sister,
because her name had been Muggeridge?"

Old Phoebe threw light on the affair. Barnaby's wife was young Mrs.
Muggeridge, who had exchanged into another regiment--was not really
Barnaby's wife! that is to say, not his legal wife.

"But there now!" said old Phoebe, when she had ended this, "if that was
not the very first of it all with me, when Dr. Nash he set me
a-thinking, by telling of Muggeridge! For how would I ever have said a
word of that old sinner to our little Dave?"

Old Maisie's attention was still on the mill-model. "You would not come
up into the corn-loft, Phoebe," said she, "because of all the white
dust. It was on everything, up there. When I went up with Barnaby the
mill was not going, because the stones were out for old Chipstone to
dress their faces. His real name was not Chipstone, but Chepstow. He
could do two stones in one day, he worked so quick. So both were got
out when he came, and the mill was stopped. Oh, Phoebe, do you remember
when a chip flew in your eye, you were so bad?"

"Now, to think of that!" said Granny Marrable. "And me clean forgot it
all these years! Old Chipstone, with glasses to shelter his eyesight;
like blinkers on a horse. 'Tis all come back to me now, like last week.
And I might have been a one-eyed girl all my days, the doctor said, only
the chip just came a little out of true. To think that all these years I
have forgotten it, and never thanked God once!"

"'Tis the sight of the mill brings it all back," said old Maisie. "I
mind it so well, and the guy you looked, dear Phoebe, with a bandage to
keep out the light. It was wolfsbane did it good, beat up in water quite
fine."

"Be sure. Only 'twas none of Dr. Adlam's remedies, I lay.... Wasn't it
Martha's--our old Martha?... There, now!--I've let go her name.... 'Twa