there, and making a Rembrandt picture with all the interest collected. into the warm brilliancy of the centre, and black depths and dancing shadows gathering mysteriously in the further corners. They sat and span, and the whirring of the wheels was all the sound that was heard in the house. It is surprising how few candles are used in farmhouses and cottages unless there is needle-work to be done, firelight serves in winter, and in summer they go to rest and rise with the sun. The wind rose as the night went on and the fire sank. At last even the spinning stopped, and Lydia and Cassandra sat on in the gloom. But few words were exchanged between them; death and misery, and care and ruin, were hanging over them by the turning of a hair, and they were bracing themselves, each in her different way, to meet them.

"Dear heart o' me, it's a fierce night both for man and beast," said Lydia at last. "I wonder where German's got to by now a struggling through the mire."

"I'd reether be him," answered Cassie with a sigh; "it's harder work to ha' to sit still and hear the wild winds shoutin' round us o' this fashion."

"The storm is tremenduous to-night, surely. We mun look the candle ain't blowed out towards the Moor," observed Lydia, going from time to time to see after the welfare of the little lighthouse-which she had carefully sheltered from the blast by a fortification of pans and jugs. The great fear, however, that underlay all was put into words by neither of them. The winter's wind howled and sighed, and moaned and struggled round the house with a sort of fitful angry vehemence. A storm easily became almost a whirlwind on that exposed spot, and shook and rattled the unshuttered casements till it seemed as if they would have been driven in. There seemed to the women to be wailing cries sometimes in the howling of the blast, which shook the door and the windows with the sort of pitiful fierce longing to get in, which makes it seem almost like a personal presence. It is an eerie thing to sit in the dark in a lonely house on such a night, when all the spirits and ghosts and powers of the air of early belief seem to be natural:

Those demons that are found

In fire, air, flood, and under ground

appear to be all abroad. We have nearly forgotten the awe which Nature inspired when man struggled, weak and alone, with her mighty powers, and was generally worsted, as it seems, in the days of cave and lake dwellers, and makers of flint weapons. We judge of her, beaten, cabined, and confined, as we see her and use her in cities and civilized places, and we have lost the terror of her which formed so large a part of the religions of old.

"Didst thou not hear the dog howling a while back?" said Cassie, anxiously, in a lull of the wind. "They say as that means a death for summun as is not far off; and there's the boggat thee knowest at the turning nigh th' auld mill, where the man was drownded as long Tim see'd

a while back he telled me; and they say as the ghost at the Dumble shows hisself when any one is nigh to death," added the girl, beginning to pile up one terror on another in her restless misery.

answered Lydia, gently;

"I dunna think as I should much mind meeting them as is gone," "and some on 'em I'd give a deal to see again, They canna do us any hurt as I can see." "But them ill things as is mebbe about now i' th' wind?" whispered poor Cassie, in an awestruck voice.

in the flesh or out on it.

"Dearie, I tak' it God A'mighty's more cleverable and strong nor all the devils put togither; they're but a poor lot to strive again the great God as rules the world, and I'm not afraid, nayther for them we loves nor for oursen. Wilt thou not get thee to bed, dear child? I think the storm's going down, and thee'lt be wored out wi' watching," said Lydia, as the clock struck twelve.

"What, and leave thee in the dreary night thy lane!"

"Then lie down o' th' settle, dearie." And she began to prepare a place for her; but almost before she could look round, Cassie had dragged down pillows and blankets for both from upstairs. They lay in silence for some time.

wait, wait, and "An I were in

"How strange 'tis, that some folk's lives is just wait, it's so weary," said Cassie, with a sort of impatient sigh. my grave I couldn't be farther off hearing o' Roland. I mid a'most as well be dead; I'm a no good to nobody," she ended, drearily.

"How iver canst thee talk o' that fashion; what dost thee think I should do wi'out thee?" answered Lydia, sadly.

The girl drew her closer to her side on the "sofee" without speaking. "To-night's the very pattern o' my life; I'm like a sheep caught in the thicket, as canna stir ony way," she said at last.

Lydia had never heard of Milton, but her answer was much the same as if she had known him by heart. "The Lord has different ways of serving Him, dear heart; 'tis sometimes the hardest work He gives us for to be still. Please God 'tain't for allus wi' thee; there comes a stormy time and sunshine to all. Lo, the winter has ceased, the rain is over and gone,' says the wise Solomon in his song; and 'tis true both for man and weather. Sure the wind is lulling even now."

She got up as she spoke and looked out into the night: the storm seemed to have blown itself away, and the moon was shining high in the heavens, with nothing near her but masses of white fleecy cloud careering at a great height from the ground in the keen north wind which had risen. "The winds and rain pass over our life, but the moon and stars are shining steady behind the clouds for a' that. An our feet are fixed on His rock we shanna be moved. Wait,' says the Psalm. But then it ain't waiting bare and cold like; doesna He put the comfort after it? Wait, I say, upon the Lord," ended Lydia, solemnly. And then they lay down in each other's arms and slept for two or three hours, worn out by their long vigil of constant expectation, than which nothing is more trying.

CHAPTER XV.

WHAT WAS FOUND UNDER THE TOR.

"GATE!" shouted a carter before the closed toll-bar. The moon was nearly at the full, shining very brightly. German sprang up and huddled on his things. It was almost four o'clock; he could hardly believe that he had slept so long. "There's been a murder, they say, up th' dale; they'd a fun' a body lyin' in the road, and was a goin' for summat to bring it in," said the man. "But I daredna wait for to see un-I'd got coals for to fetch. I thought I mid be back though, an I made haste." The lad gave a loud cry: he felt sure whose body it was.

66

Why, what's come to the boy?" said the carter, as German set off at a run.

"It's his drunken feyther, he thinks, most like."

"What, is yon young German Ashford frae the Lone More? He mun hae his handful an they speak true on his feyther."

There was a sort of small hamlet gathered round a public-house a little further on, and the lad ran panting through. Early as it was, women's faces were looking out of the windows, and the boys were coming out like flies. Any excitement is pleasant in a village, and a murder best of all.

"They say 'tis just beyond the big Tor," they cried, as the boy slackened his pace to inquire.

He came up at length to the place, about a mile beyond. The great perpendicular rocks jutted out like fortress towers at a turn in the narrow valley, apparently blocking all further passage to the road. The moon was shining on the broad white face of the limestone "Tor," out of which grew a black yew from a rift near the top, and seemed to hang almost in mid air. The dale below lay in the deepest shadow, except where through a gap in the steep walls of rock the light shone on the stream-turbid and swollen with the late rains and flowing rapidly across the road-and on the face of the murdered man as he lay close to the edge of the water, near the stone over which he had been thrown. The old mare had been found grazing not far off, and two men who had come up, after vainly trying to lift the dreary burden of her master upon her back, were putting him into a sort of barrow, which they had brought with them. “He ain't dead," said one of them, compassionately, as the boy pressed panting up.

"But that's pretty nigh all you can say. He'd take a pretty deal o' killing would old Ashford," said the other, without any intention of being unkind.

Meantime, German was striving to raise the head and chafe the hands. "You'd best take un to the Miner's Arms,' my lad. The wimmen and the doctors mun tak' him in hand; ye canna do noething," said they kindly, and began to move. German looked round on the place. The marks of the struggle, if there had been one, were hidden in a sea of mud ; there were a few spots of blood where the head had lain-nothing more was to be seen.

"I've a searched all round," said the man, in answer to his inquiring glance, "and canna find owt but the cudgel that must ha' smashed un's yead, and this bit o' broken pipe. Is un yer father's?" said he, as the boy walked beside him leading the horse.

German shook his head. "He'd a long sight o' money wi' him as he were a bringing for's rent at the squire's, but I s'pose a' that's gone."

"Him as hit yon hole in un, wouldna ha' left the brass alone," said the man; "but you'd best look i' his pockets yersen." German did as he was bid, and the doleful little party moved on. Presently they were met by all the available boys in the place, and many of the men too.

"Won't one o' they chaps leave looking and go for the doctor?" said German, wrathfully, though in so low a voice that the men could hardly hear.

"Go off, young un, and tell Dr. Baily as there's been a man murdered; he'll be here fast enough."

Another little messenger was despatched to Stone Edge, but the late dull winter's dawn had risen before Lydia and Cassie could arrive, although they came down the hill as quickly as possible, bringing with them the little cart to take Ashford home; but the doctor would not allow him to be moved.

There was scarcely any help possible for him, however, now, either from the women or the doctors: he could neither move nor speak; the tough old frame was just alive, but that was all, and they could do nothing but sit by watching the fading life ebb slowly away in the little low dark bedroom of the "Miner's Arms."

"Poor feyther," repeated Cassie, as she leant against the post of the bed looking sadly on, while Lydia sat silently by the dying man, bathing the head according to the doctor's directions, with that sort of unutterable sadness which yet is very different from sorrow. The personal character of the man had, however, as it were, died with him, and nothing seemed to have remained but the relation to themselves. "It" was their father and her husband: all else had been wiped out by the pitying hand of death. German came restlessly in and out of the room, tormented by the ceaseless questionings and suppositions and surmises below-stairs, and yet feeling of no use in the chamber of death above.

"To be sure what a turn it giv' me when first I heerd on it! Ye might ha' knocked me down wi' a straw," said the landlady, who looked like a man in petticoats, and whose portly person nearly filled the doorway as she looked in with kindly intentions of help. "And ye can't do nothin', doctor says,-and all the money gone too, I hear? You'd a sore hantle wi' him bytimes an all tales be true; but for a' that it's a pity to see a man's yead drove in like a ox's. I'm a coming," she called out for the fifth time. The little public was doing "a middlin' tidy business," as she said, that day; liquor was at a premium, for curiosity is a thirsty passion, and the landlady's duties were thick upon her. But she found time continually to come up and administer appropriate consolations.

"Yer'll bury him decent and comf'able," said she another time.

"I

were like to hae died Janawary come a twelvemonth, and I were so low and bad I could ha' howled, and my master he ups and says so kind, 'Now don't ye take on, Betty; I'll do a' things handsome by ye. I'll bury ye wi' beef!"

In a few hours all was over.

The world must go on, however, whether life or death be on hand; cows must be milked and beasts fed. "We must be back to Stone Edge," said Lydia, with a sigh. "There's nobody but Tom i' charge, and he's but a poor leer [empty] chap."

"German mun stop and bring the body up home, arter the inquest. They say they'll get it done afore night, else we shanna get him home at a'. There's more storms coming up, and the snow'll fall when the wind lulls," added Cassie.

"Sure it'll be here afore morning; the wind's uncommon nipping," said the landlady, as the two women walked silently away.

It is more mournful on such occasions not to be able to regret. Not to grieve, not to suffer loss, was the real woe, as they wound their sad way home in the chill bleak winter's day, with a dull sort of nameless pain at their hearts.

The absence of complaint is most remarkable in the peasant class: they mostly take the heaviest shock quietly, as coming immediately "from the hand of God." "As a plain fact, whose right or wrong they question not, confiding still that it shall last not over long."

CHAPTER XVI.

A MIDNIGHT "FLITTING."

THE town of Youlcliffe, though considered by its inhabitants as a great city, consisted of little more than one long street which wandered up and down the steepest "pitches," according to the lay of the hill on which it was set, in an extraordinary fashion. Indeed, in some parts the street was so steep that in frosty weather a cart could hardly get up or down. There seemed no reason why there should have been any town in that place at all: there was no river, it was singularly out of the way and inconvenient of access-yet it was the "chef lieu" of the "wapentake" and the seat of the Mineral courts, which, ruling by their own strange laws, make wild work of what are considered in more favoured regions as rights of property.

The backs of all the houses opened upon lonely fields, and Joshua's was particularly well adapted to his wants. The one-eyed front stood at a corner of the grey old market-place, not too much overlooked, yet seeing everything. Alongside the dwelling-house opened the deep dark stone archway which led into a labyrinth of cattle-sheds and pens, beyond which lay a small croft for the use of his beasts, abutting on a blind lane which