d, yet familiar fashion, and then stood as if they wanted to
talk, but without speaking. Harry and I passed, both with a nod of
recognition to the young woman, but neither of us had the ill-manners
to look behind. I glanced at Harry, and he answered me with a queer
look. When we reached the turning that would hide them from our view, I
looked back almost involuntarily, and there they were still standing.
But before we reached the door of the rectory, Joe got up with us.

There was something remarkable in the appearance of Agnes Coombes, the
sexton's daughter. She was about six-and-twenty, I should imagine, the
youngest of the family, with a sallow, rather sickly complexion,
somewhat sorrowful eyes, a smile rare and sweet, a fine figure, tall
and slender, and a graceful gait. I now saw, I thought, a good
hair's-breadth further into the smith's affairs. Beyond the
hair's-breadth, however, all was dark. But I saw likewise that the well
of truth, whence I might draw the whole business, must be the girl's
mother.

After the men had had their dinner and rested a while, they went back
to the church, and I went to the sexton's cottage. I found the old man
seated at the window, with his pot of beer on the sill, and an empty
plate beside it.

"Come in, sir," he said, rising, as I put my head in at the door. "The
mis'ess ben't in, but she'll be here in a few minutes."

"O, it's of no consequence," I said. "Are they all well?"

"All comfortable, sir. It be fine dry weather for them, this, sir. It
be in winter it be worst for them."

"But it's a snug enough shelter you've got here. It seems such, anyhow;
though, to be sure, it is the blasts of winter that find out the weak
places both in house and body."

"It ben't the wind touch _them_" he said; "they be safe enough from the
wind. It be the wet, sir. There ben't much snow in these parts; but
when it du come, that be very bad for them, poor things!"

Could it be that he was harping on the old theme again?

"But at least this cottage keeps out the wet," I said. "If not, we mus