"Ah, that'll be Win Hill he'd mean," said Nanny, much interested. "Yes,' says he. I've a heerd tell o' that. There were a big battle here atwixt the Danes and them as were o' th' country-side. And an this be Lose Hill, where were the folks buried as were killed i' th' fight? What's yon mound?' he says, peering wi' his head o' one side, and his sharp eyes and barnacles. 'What, thattens? do ye mean Deddun's Mead?' says I. That's it,' he goes on. 'Dead Man's Mead' (as if he know'd a deal more o' it nor I, as had lived on it man and boy all my days). 'Ha' ye never digged nor found anything i' th' "lowe?" "What would there be? Gold, man?' I cum down sharp on 'im. Nay, friend, nowt but dead men's bones, and pikeheads, and cracked jugs mebbe,'" he says.

"And what for should ye fash yersen wi' thattens, I wonder?" put in Nanny.

"Well and that's just what I says to un. I want na bones, nor cracked jugs; there's eneuch o' them, and porringers too, i' th' house, wi' a' the lads and lasses break!' Wi' that he laughed right out-ye could ha' heerd him right over the hill. Mebbe ye'r in the right there, my man; they wouldn't be o' much account to you!' and a looked so queer out o' his eyes; and I heerd arter as it mun ha' been Squire Rivers from that side country! Well-a-day, what maggots them quality does tak' up wi'; cos they hasn't nowt else to do I take it! But if I'd ha' know'd it were the old squire I wouldna ha' made so free.

"Well, ye'd the best on him about the jugs anyhow," said Nanny, cheerfully.

"Ay, that had I; hadn't I?" repeated the old man, much pleased. "I tuk the change out on him there, I did."

After all, Nanny had brought a charm with her, and approved herself a good leech. Ashford improved from that time. She had amused him, and listened to and admired him, two of the best sedatives known in any pharmacopoeia.

CHAPTER VII.

FERN-CUTTING ON THE DRUID'S HILL.

It was a beautiful day late in October about a month after. "German," said his father, coming wearily into the house, "we mun ha' more bracken cut for fodder down i' th' Parson's Lot. Ye mun go down to-day, or it'll be too wet. I do b'leeve there ain't the kip o' a single heifer upo' the whole lot. I mun get what I can out of it. I were a fool to promise thretty shillin' a year for't, the meresmen said as how it werena much above three acre. The old mare can git with the cart as far as the gate. I canna go, and Cassie'd better go i' th' stead to help thee."

German knew that it was much too late in the season for cutting bracken, but nothing was ever done in time at Stone Edge; and he and his sister took their sickles in silence and went down as they were desired.

VOL. XV.-No. 90.

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Nothing, in fact, could be less remunerative or more beautiful than the ground in question. It lay some distance from the farm, where the shelter of the warmer valley began. The steep hill-side was clothed with sweeps of wood, amongst which the grey piles of rock appeared; the soil was so shallow indeed, and so broken with stones, that one wondered how the tall trees found nourishment of any kind. Here and there were open spaces covered with heather and bracken, which in this autumn time had ripened to a russet brown, diversified with brilliant yellow and green patches of rushy grass, rich in colour beyond description. Slender white birch-stems and pendent mountain-ash hung with a wreath of scarlet · berries, grew in groups here and there. A strip of this unprofitable beanty had been allotted to the parson in some primitive distribution of the unenclosed soil; and a scraggy heifer or two belonging to Ashford now gained a scanty living on it, with an immense amount of toil. It was chiefly valuable to him for the fern, which saved straw, and German always rather enjoyed the expedition. Any change is pleasant to a boy, even to a hill-side a mile off; and he drove his old mare down the hill, with his sister by his side, shaken to pieces, but both very merry. German unharnessed the mare and tied her up, and Cassie wandered on with her sickle in hand. Over all passed the shadows of the 'great fleecy clouds overhead, which sailed across the blue sky, throwing a changing shade here and there over the woods and hills, making the sunlit portions still more lovely in their autumn dress. Presently she thought she heard voices in the little grassy lane, which ran on the other side of the small stream at the bottom of the hill, and she leaned against the ruined wall, overspread with ivy and beautiful creeping plants, and hidden in a covert of honeysuckle and fern. Presently three men came out of a field on the other side of the lane. Joshua was warmly debating the value of a horse, which he had just been trying, with its master, the miller.

"I tell ye the nag's ten year old an she's a day. She ayn't worth five pounds," shouted he.

"She's worth more nor any horse you ever had," retorted the miller. "You might ride her to Youlcliffe without her turning a hair."

Roland, little interested, stood holding his father's horse and his own, and looking sadly up the valley which led to Stone Edge-so intently, that Cassie felt sure he would miss seeing her, and yet by moving she was afraid of drawing his father's attention. At last his eyes caught sight of German in the fern high up on the hill, and came eagerly down in search of her. There was a small close and a tolerably wide brook, and the wall on the bank be'ween them, across which they stood looking at each other. His father and the miller went on gesticulating and arguing within a couple of yards of him, screaming, swearing, appealing, defending, while Roland, half hidden by the horses, gazed across the intervening space, and sadly said most eloquent things in that unvoiced conversation; and Cassie from her covert, masked by fern, under the changing shadows of the birch and mountain-ash, answered him again in the same language.

At length Joshua, in the necessary passion, all in the way of business, turned suddenly round, seized his horse's bridle out of his son's hand, and rode off saying, "Come, Roland, I'll none waste my time with such roundings."

Luckily the

You'll think

He was very sharp-eyed was Joshua, but a bargain is a bargain and an absorbing occupation, and he was watching the changes on the miller's face, not the unprofitable quivering of mountain-ashes. miller's last words were long. "We'll halve the difference. on it again," was thrown backward and forward fiercely. Roland could not leave Cassie thus without a word. He took his chance, passed his horse's bridle under a stone on the wall, vaulted it, leaped at the brook, stumbled on the muddy bank and slipped with one leg into the water, sprang up the other side, and seized her by the hands with the greatest difficulty as he clung on to the wall.

"Oh, Roland!" said she, bending down from her high estate, and looking like a Druid priestess with her sickle under the oak-tree. "Thee father will be just right down mad. Go off, my lad. Lyddy bid me tell thee thou mustna come again till thy feyther and mine agree."

He had no time for remonstrances. In another moment he had cleared the stream and the wall again, had leapt on his horse and followed his father, carefully riding on the off-side of him to conceal his wet leg. Joshua was in high glee at getting the cob a few shillings cheaper than it was worth, and chatted on cheerfully to his son without perceiving his preoccupation. Cassie stood listening to the sharp sound of the horses' tread on the limestone which followed the unseen line of road far down the valley, till at a bend in the hill-side it stopped suddenly, when she turned round with a sigh.

"Well, I niver!" said German, laughing, behind her, "And that sharp un, Joshuay, not to see a mossel o' it right under his very nose! We shanna get much bracken tho' at this rate. Thee mun help me to stack what I've got intil th' cart, or we shanna get home to-night."

The winter passed on and they never met again, while neither German nor Cassie were suffered to go down to their uncle's at Youlcliffe.

One market-day, however, the old man's rheumatics were so bad that he summoned German to take the old mare and go down with a sample of oats in his stead.

"And I shall go and see my aunt," said the boy, stoutly. His father was grunting a refusal, but Lydia interposed, and his wrath was diverted on her devoted head.

"Feyther keeps her there argufying an it were her fault he's got a rick in's back," said German to his sister, who came with him to the door.

thou

"Here's the kitling as she axed me for a long time back. How wilt carry it?" answered she.

"Gie it me in here," said German, opening his waistcoat, and the

kitten was dropped into rather dangerous proximity to his skin, but appa rently quite satisfied with its situation.

"Thou'st main good, lad, to dumb beasts," observed Lydia, admiringly, who had come up. ""Tain't a many as 'ud dare to ha' a cat's claws so nigh their flesh."

"See Roland an thee canst, lad, and bring me word o' him," whispered Cassie in her brother's ear, as he mounted the long-legged beast with his burden before him.

"And get me twal shirt-button," cried Lydia as he rode away.

Having arrived at Youlcliffe, put up his horse, and done his business, without seeing any signs of Roland, he betook himself to his aunt's, whom he found sitting jovial, cheerful, and red with heat, near a tremendous fire on a very hot day. In the abundance of coal in that district, it is thought bad manners and hospitality ever to let down the fire, however much suffering it may entail on oneself and one's friends.

66

'Well, German," said she, "and I'm very glad to see yer. Yes, I'm purely, thank ye, only I canna get shut o' the pean in my yead. By times it's enough to drive a dog mad."

"I've a brought the kitling, aunt, and it's a black one Cassie bid me say she had a chose," said he, as he drew forth the little woolly bundle and set it on a chair, where it stretched itself after its close packing, and contemplated existence in a grand way very deliberately.

"Dear heart alive, but it's a pretty un! They tell me it's good luck to bring a black cat to a house, but I dunna set great store by a' them things folks says."

"Thou'lt be fine and hungry, lad," said his uncle. can eat your bellyful a many times over i' th' day.

"You young uns Thou'st nigh clemmed,

I take it. The air's very strong and healthful at Stone Edge."

"Here's wheaten bread and cheese," said the old woman, "while I warm the bacon and broad beans left fra our dinner; there's nobbut a bilin' o''em left, I take it. And how's Cassie?" she inquired, standing over the boy and hospitably heaping the food on his plate. "I take it as very hard as I canna see her. One's own niece is a deal more to one nor one's husband's; leastways when hur's like Martha Savage."

"Thee niver canst abide Martha, my missis," said old Nathan, smiling.

"She've a tongue like a nutmeg grater, and she's as sharp as a ferret." "There ain't a mossel o' harm in her," answered her husband; "but she do talk, there's no denying that."

"Talk!" replied Mrs. Broom, energetically. "She'd talk a horse's leg off! And she were the ugliest baby as ever I set eyes on," continued the old woman, in this rather miscellaneous catalogue of Mrs. Martha's crimes. "Fou' in the cradle, fair in the saddle,' they say, you know," said Nathan, laughing.

"Nay, there ye're quite out," answered his wife, triumphantly; "that saddle wunna fit, for she ain't fair, and she's never been upo' a horse's

back in her born days; but thou lovest them proverbs so as thou'lt fit 'um upo' a' heads."

German meantime was doing full justice even to his aunt's Benjamin portion of food, his mouth had hitherto been too busy for talk, but there is an end even to a boy's appetite.

"Thank yer kindly, aunt, I'm full," he said at last, in answer to her renewed entreaties to eat, as he rose.

"And how's yer father?" she began. "He's very nasty-tempered. I've no patience wi' him for's ways. His head's as full o' maggots

[fancies] as an egg is o' meat."

"Hush, wife," said Nathan, who took the side of the authorities. "Ye mustna say that afore his son. He's a bit westy by times is Ashford, that's a'. By 'r Lady, is it!"-(the curious old Catholic oath of the district).*

"What, when he keeps Cassie mewed up wi' his tantrums, and won't so much as let her own aunt ha' the view on her! And here's my own sister's son as I ha' hardly set eyes on sin' he were growed up!"

Besides," said Nathan the wise, "correction's good for childer." And he went on chaunting, in a grave sonorous voice,—

Solomon said, in accents mild,

Spare the rod and spile the child;

Be they man or be they maid,

Whip them and whallop them, Solomon said!

"I

"I dunna see as man or maid either's the better for cuttin' in to," answered German, meditatively, as he put the finishing stroke to a stickhead which he was making for his uncle with his beloved new knife. ain't a bit of wood, as he should carve me into what fashion he fancies. Here's yer stick, uncle, and long health to use it, and I wish I was where the stick will be-along with yer."

"Thank ye kindly, my lad, and the same to you, and dunna ye be in too great a haste wi' your life. There be a deal o' pride i' th' world wants felling."

"I bean't a learnin' nothin'; it's just muddlin' and milkin' and wabblin' i' th' mud arter plough-tail. I'm like the little donkeys i' th' lane, I canna addle [earn] nought." The burgher blood from his mother was stirring curiously in the lad. "Roland would ha' learnt me to write and cipher, but feyther wouldn' let me nigh him. Well, good-by, uncle. I must go; the minits runs as fast as rats down here."

"I want ye for to go to Amos Young's, up your way, German," shouted his aunt after him, "and get me some pills. My inside's very tickle for to fettle, and I mun hae 'em from him."

"I'll go and welcome; but I didn't know as he'd a knowed owt o' doctoring," answered her nephew.

"No, but he's a very pious man," said Mrs. Broom, convincedly.

"By'r lady shall she."-See Capulet: Romeo and Juliet.