was
surrounded: it only contained three rooms on a floor, and was but two
stories high. On the first, or ground floor, were the parlour, kitchen,
and back or working kitchen; up-stairs, Mr. and Mrs. Barclay's room,
that belonging to Lois, and the maid-servant's room. If a guest came,
Lois left her own chamber, and shared old Clemence's bed. But those
days were over. Never more should Lois see father or mother on earth;
they slept, calm and still, in Barford churchyard, careless of what
became of their orphan child, as far as earthly manifestations of care
or love went. And Clemence lay there too, bound down in her grassy bed
by withes of the briar-rose, which Lois had trained over those three
precious graves before leaving England for ever.

There were some who would fain have kept her there; one who swore in
his heart a great oath unto the Lord that he would seek her sooner or
later, if she was still upon the earth. But he was the rich heir and
only son of the Miller Lucy, whose mill stood by the Avon-side in the
grassy Barford meadows, and his father looked higher for him than the
penniless daughter of Parson Barclay (so low were clergymen esteemed in
those days!); and the very suspicion of Hugh Lucy's attachment to Lois
Barclay made his parents think it more prudent not to offer the orphan
a home, although none other of the parishioners had the means, even if
they had the will, to do so.

So Lois swallowed her tears down till the time came for crying, and
acted upon her mother's words:

'Lois, thy father is dead of this terrible fever, and I am dying. Nay,
it is so, though I am easier from pain for these few hours, the Lord be
praised! The cruel men of the Commonwealth have left thee very
friendless. Thy father's only brother was shot down at Edgehill. I,
too, have a brother, though thou hast never heard me speak of him, for
he was a schismatic; and thy father and he had words, and he left for
that new country beyond the seas, without ever saying farewell to us.
But Ralph was a kind lad until he took up these new-fangled notions,
and for the old days' sake he will take thee in, and love thee as a
child, and place thee among his children. Blood is thicker than water.
Write to him as soon as I am gone--for Lois, I am going--and I bless
the Lord that has letten me join my husband again so soon.' Such was
the selfishness of conjugal love; she thought little of Lois's
desolation in comparison with her rejoicing over h