his cow, and serve the pigs, and feed the dogs, and dig the garden, and clean the shoes and knives, and run errands-in short, to be a man of all work. Willy was gone that very mornTing-He had cried to part with her, and she had almost cried herself, she should miss him 80; he was like her own child. But then it was such a great place; and Thomas Lamb seemed such a kind master-talked of new clothing him, and meant him to wear shoes and stockings, and was very kind indeed. But poor Willy had cried sadly at leaving her," and the sweet matronly elder sister fairly cried too. I comforted her all I could, first by praises of Thomas Lamb, who happened to be of my acquaintance, and was indeed the very master whom, bad I had the choice, I would have selected for Willy; and secondly, by the gift of some unconsidered trifles, which one should have been ashamed to offer to any one who bad ever had a house over her head, but which the pretty gipsy girl received with transport, especially some working materials of the commonest sort. Poor Fanny had never known the luxury of a thimble before; it was as new to her fingers as shoes and stockings were likely to be to Willy's feet. She forgot her sorrows, and tripped home to her oak-tree the happiest of the happy. Thomas Lamb, Willy's new master, was, as I have said, of my acquaintance. He was a remarkably fine young man, and as wellmannered as those of his calling usually are. Generally speaking, there are no persons, exrepting real gentlemen, so gentlemanly as game-keepers. They keep good company.The beautiful and graceful creatures whom Ly at once preserve and pursue, and the equally noble and generous animals whom By train, are their principal associates; and even by their masters they are regarded rather as companions than as servants. They attend them in their sports more as guides and leadera than as followers, pursuing a common recreation with equal enjoyment, and often with superior skill. Game-keepers are almost always well-behaved, and Thomas Lamb was eminently so. He had quite the look of a man of fashion; the person, the carriage, the air. His figure was tall and striking; his features delicately carved, with a paleness of complexion, and a slight appearance of ill-health, that added to their elegance. In short, he was exactly what the ladies would have called interesting in a gentleman; and the gentleness ef his voice and manner, and the constant propriety of his deportment, tended to confirm the impression. tage, almost as lonely as if it had been placed in a desert island. It stood, in the centre of his preserves, in the midst of a wilderness of coppice and woodland, accessible only by a narrow winding path, and at least a mile from the nearest habitation. When you had threaded the labyrinth, and were fairly arrived in Thomas's dominion, it was a pretty territory. A low thatched cottage, very irregularly built, with a porch before the door, and a vine halfcovering the casements; a garden a good deal neglected, (Thomas Lamb's four-footed subjects, the hares, took care to eat up all his flowers; hares are animals of taste, and are particularly fond of pinks and carnations, the rogues!) an orchard and a meadow, completed the demesne. There was, also, a commodious dog-kennel, and a stable, of which the outside was completely covered with the trophies of Thomas's industry-kites, jackdaws, magpies, hawks, crows, and owls, nailed by the wings, displayed, as they say in heraldry, against the wall, with polecats, weazels, stoats, and hedgehogs figuring at their side, a perfect menagerie of dead game-killers.* But the prettiest part of this woodland cottage, was the real living game that flitted about it, as tame as barn-door fowls; partridges flocking to be fed, as if there were not a dog, or a gun, or a man in the world; pheasants, glorious creatures! coming at a call; hares almost as fearless as Cowper's, that would stand to let you look at them; would let you approach quite near, before they raised one quivering ear and darted off; and that even then, when the instinct of timidity was aroused, would turn at a safe distance to look again. Poor, pretty things! What a pity it seemed to kill them! Such was to be Willy's future habitation. The day after he had entered upon his place, I had an opportunity of offering my double congratulations, to the master on his new servant, to the servant on his new master. — Whilst taking my usual walk, I found Thomas Lamb, Dick, Willy, and Fanny, about halfway up the lane, engaged in the animating sport of unearthing a weazel, which one of the gipsy dogs followed into a hole by the ditch-side. The boys showed great sportsmanship on this occasion; and so did their poor curs, who with their whole bodies inserted into different branches of the burrow, and nothing visible but their tails (the one, the long puggish brush of which I have already made mention, the other, a terrier-like stump, *Foxes, the destruction of which is so great an object in a pheasant preserve, never are displayed, espeLuckily for him, however, this delicacy and cially if there be a pack of hounds in the neighbourfurment lay chiefly on the surface. His hood. That odious part of a game-keeper's occupation eestitution, habits, and temper were much is as quietly and unostentatiously performed as any eter fitted to his situation, much hardier and operation of gunnery can be. Lords of manors will even affect to preserve foxes-Heaven forgive them! letier than they appeared to be. He was just as an unpopular ministry is sure to talk of prostill a bachelor, and lived by himself in a cot-tecting the liberty of the subject. that maintained an incessant wag), continued to dig and scratch, throwing out showers of earth, and whining with impatience and eagerness. Every now and then, when quite gasping and exhausted, they came out for a moment's air; whilst the boys took their turn, poking with a long stick, or loosening the ground with their hands, and Thomas stood by superintending and encouraging both dog and boy, and occasionally cutting a root or a bramble that impeded their progress. Fanny, also, entered into the pursuit with great interest, dropping here and there a word of advice, as nobody can help doing when they see others in perplexity. In spite of all these aids, the mining operation proceeded so slowly, that the experienced keeper sent off his new attendant for a spade to dig out the vermin, and I pursued my walk. After this encounter, it so happened that I never went near the gipsy tent without meeting Thomas Lamb-sometimes on foot, sometimes on his pony; now with a gun, now without; but always loitering near the oaktree, and always, as it seemed, reluctant to be seen. It was very unlike Thomas's usual manner to seem ashamed of being caught in any place, or in any company; but so it was. Did he go to the ancient sibyl to get his fortune told? or was Fanny the attraction? A very short time solved the query. cried out against the match. It was rather a bold measure, certainly; but I think it will end well. They are, beyond a doubt, the handsomest couple in these parts; and as the fortune-teller and her eldest grandson have had the good sense to decamp, and Fanny, be sides being the most grateful and affectionate creature on earth, turns out clever and docile, and comports herself just as if she had lived in a house all her days, there are some hopes that in process of time her sin of gipsyism may be forgiven, and Mrs. Lamb be considered as visitable, at least by her next neighbours, the wives of the shoemaker and the parish clerk. At present, I am sorry to have it to say, that these worthy persons have sent both Thomas and her to Coventry-a misfortune which they endure with singular resignation. And now, since farewell must be said, I do not know that I can find a fitter moment. We are all as happy as people in a last page ought to be;-the lovers in an union of affection, the rest of the village in the news and the wonderment. Farewell, then, courteous reader! "To all, to each, a fair good night, And pleasant dreams and slumbers light!" PREFACE.* One night, towards the end of the month, the keeper presented himself at our house on justice business. He wanted a summons for some poachers who had been committing depredations in the preserve. Thomas was a great favourite; and was, of course, immediately admitted, his examination taken, and his request complied with. "But how," said the magistrate, looking up from the summons which he was signing, "how can you expect, Thomas, to keep your pheasants, when that gipsy boy with his finders has pitched his tent just in the midst of your best coppices, killing more game than half the poachers in the country?" "Why, as to the gipsy, sir," replied Thomas, "Fanny is as good a girl-" "I was not talking of Fanny," interrupted deprecate a too literal construction of facts, the man of warrants, smiling-" as good a and names, and dates. "Ah, girl," pursued Thomas "A very pretty It was a measure to set every tongue in the village a wagging: for Thomas, besides his personal good gifts, was well to do in the world-my lord's head keeper, and prime favourite. He might have pretended to any farmer's daughter in the parish: every body THOSE gentle readers, be they few or many, who may have paid the two Volumes entitled Our Village the compliment of holding them in recollection, will easily recognize the same locality, the same class of people, and often the same individuals, in the present collection of Country Stories, which is, indeed, at all points, a continuation of the former work. The Authoress has only to hope that it may be received with similar indulgence; and to INTRODUCTION. EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. "ANY changes in our Village since the last advices? What news of May and Lizzy and Fanny and Lucy? And does the Loddon continue to flow as brightly as when we gathered musk-roses together in the old grounds of Aberleigh?" These interrogatories formed part of a letter from India, written by my pretty friend Emily *To the third volume, as originally published. L., now the wife of an officer of rank on that station; and my answer to her kind questioning, may serve to satisfy the curiosity of other gentle readers as to the general state of our little commonwealth, and form no unfit introduction to the more detailed narratives that follow. They who condescended to read the letter-press will have the advantage of my fair correspondent. Indeed I doubt whether she herself may not derive her first information from the printed book; my epistle being, as far as I can judge, wholly illegible to all but the writer. Never was such a manuscript seen! for being restricted to one sheet of paper, and having a good deal of miscellaneous matter to discuss before entering on our village affairs, I had fallen into a silly fashion of crossing, not uncommon amongst young ladies; so that my letter first written horizontally like other people's, then perpendicularly to form a sort of checker-work, then diagonally in red ink, the very crossings crossed! and every nook and cranny, the part under the seal, the corner where the date stood, covered with small lines in an invisible hand, the whole letter became a mass of mysterious marks, a puzzle like a Coptic inscription, or a state paper in cypher to those unacquainted with the key. I must put an extract into print if only for the benefit of my fair correspondent; and here it is: the operation, or clustered into groups near the door. "You used to say, and there was too much truth in the assertion, that for pigs, geese and children, and their concomitants, dirt and noise, this pretty place was unrivalled. But then you were here when the two first evils were at their height, in June and July. At present the geese have felt the stroke of Michaelmas, and are fatted and thinned; pigs too have diminished; though as the children are proportionably increased, we are not much better off in point of cleanliness, and much worse in regard to noise :—a pig being, except just when ringing or killing, a tolerably silent animal; and a goose, in spite of the old Roman story, only vociferous by fits and starts; whereas little boys and little girlsat least, the little boys and little girls hereabout-seem on the full cry or the full shout from sunrise to sunset. Even the dinner hour, that putter down of din in most civilized countries, makes no pause amongst our small people. The nightingale who sings all day and all night to solace his brooding mate, is but a type of their unwearying power of voice. His sweet harmony doth find intervals; their discord hath none. "And yet they have light hearts too, poor urchins; witness Dame Wilson's three sunburnt ragged boys who with Ben Kirby and a few comrades of lesser note, are bawling and squabbling at marbles on one side of the road; and Master Andrews's four fair-haired girls who are scrambling and squalling at baseball on the other! How happy they are, poor things, and with how few of the implements of happiness beyond sunshine and liberty and their own young life! Even the baker's and the wheelwright's children are stealing a run and a race up the hill as they go to school, and managing to make quite noise enough to attract attention; although quiet than their compeers in tatters, and hardly so merry; it being an axiom which I have rarely known to fail in country life, that the poorer the urchin, the fuller of glee. Short of starvation, nothing tames the elves. Blessed triumph of youthful spirits! merciful compensation for a thousand wants! Any change in our village?' say you. Why no, not much. In the outward world scarcely any, except the erection of two handsome red houses on the outskirts, which look very ugly just at present, simply because the eye and the landscape are unaccustomed to them, but which will set us off amazingly when the trees and the buildings become used to each other, and the glaring new tint is toned down by that great artist, the weather. For the rest the street remains quite in statu quo, unless we may count for alteration a rifacimento which is taken place in the dwell-being in whole frocks, they are rather more ing of our worthy neighbour the baker, whose oven fell in last week, and is in the act of being re-constructed by a scientific bricklayer (Ah dear me! I dare say he hath a finer name for his calling) from the good town of B. The precise merits of this new oven I cannot pretend to explain, although they have been over and over explained to me; I only know that it is to be heated on some new-fangled principle, hot water, or hot air, or steam, or cinders, which is to cost just nothing, and is to produce the staff of life, crust and crum, in such excellence as hath not been equalled since Alfred, the first baker of quality on record, had the misfortune to scorch his hostess's cake. I suspect that the result of this experiment will not be very dissimilar; but at present it is a great point of interest to the Susy and the idle. Half of our cricketers are there helping or hindering, and all the children of the street are assembled to watch "Even as I write there is another childish rabble passing the window in the wake of our friend Mr. Moore's donkey-cart. You remember Mr. Moore's fine strawberries, Emily? the real wood strawberry, which looked like a gem, and smelt like a nosegay? But strawberries are out of season now; and the donkey cart has changed its gay summer freight of fruit and flowers, and is coming down the hill heavily laden with a full dirty homely load of huge red potatoes, to vend per peck and gallon through the village, or perhaps to carry as far as B., where some amateurs of the lazy root,' curious in such underground matters, are constant customers to Mr. Moore's | to speak to her in his life,-John Ford, brother pink eyes.' It is not, however, for love of that meritorious vegetable that the boys follow the potatoe-cart. One corner is parted off for apples, in hopes to tempt our thrifty housewives into the cheap extravagance of a pudding or a pie. Half a bushel of apples as yellow and mellow as quinces are deposited in one corner, and the young rogues have smelt the treasure out. "Now to answer your kind inquiries. May -to begin at home!- May -many thanks for your recollection of my favourite!-May is as well as can be expected. She is literally and figuratively in the straw, being confined with one puppy-only one; and presenting in her fair person a very complete illustration of the old proverb respecting a hen with one chick. Never was such a fuss made about a little animal since greyhounds were greyhounds, and the tiny creature is as pert, petulant, and precocious a personage as any spoilt child that ever walked on four legs or two. I must confess, in vindication of May's taste, who never before showed such absolute devotion to her offspring, that the puppy has beauty enough for a whole litter. It is a fawn-coloured with a dash of white, and promises to be ticked. Are you sportswoman sufficient to know that ticked means covered all over with white spots about the size of a pea? a great addition to greyhound beauty, and a sure sign of greyhound blood; a mark of caste, as they say in your country, and one the more to be relied on since it is a distinction of nature, and not of man. "The shoemaker's pretty daughter is also as well as can be expected.' She is out of doors to-day for the first day since her confinement, and the delicate doll-like baby, which she is tossing as lightly and gracefully as if it were indeed a doll, and showing so proudly to her father's old crony, George Bridgwater, is her own. Her marriage confounded the calculations of all her neighbours, myself included: for she did not marry her handsome admirer Jem Tanner, who has wisely comforted himself by choosing another flame, nothing so sure a remedy for one love as rushing straight into another; nor Daniel Tubb, the dashing horse-dealer, who used to flourish his gay steed up the street and down the street, "all for the love of pretty Bessie;' neither did she marry Joseph Bacon, the snug young grocer, who walked every Sunday seven miles to sit next her at chapel, and sing hymns from the same book; nor her father's smart apprentice, William Ford, although a present partnership in the business, and a future succession would have made that match quite a mariage de convenance :-none of these, her known and recognized lovers, did the fair nymph of the shoe-shop marry, nor any of her thousand and one imputed swains. The happy man was one who had never been seen to William, a tall, sinewy, comely blacksmith, who on six days of the week contrives so to become the anvil with his dingy leather cap, and his stiff leather apron, his brawny naked arms and smoky face, that he seems native to the element, a very Vulcan; whilst on the seventh, he emerges like a butterfly from the chrysalis, and by dint of fine clothes and fair water, becomes quite the beau of the village, almost as handsome as Joel himself. Since he has been married to his pretty wife, every body remembers what a bright pattern of fraternal friendship John Ford used to be thought-how attentive to William! how constant in his visits! When William had a cold, the winter before the wedding, John used to come and ask after him every night. O that love! that love! What fibs it makes honest people tell! "Lucy is gone-gone to superintend the samplers and spelling-books two counties off. Our blooming gipsy, Fauny, has also taken her departure. Her husband found that the gipsy blood could not be got over, especially as his pretty bride, besides her triple sins of gipsyism, of prettiness, and of being his bride, had the misfortune to catch, with a quickness which seemed intuitive, ways and manners suited to her new station, to behave as well as any of her neighbours, and better than most of them- an affront which the worthiest of her society found unpardonable. So Thomas is gone to hold the same office at my Lord's estate in Devonshire; where if they have the wit to keep their own counsels, the mésalliance will never be suspected, and Fanny will pass for a gamekeeper's wife of the very first fashion. Lizzy! Alas! alas! you ask for Lizzy! -do you remember how surely at the closed gate of the flower court, or through the open door of her father's neat dwelling, we used to see the smiling rosy face, so full of life and glee; the square sturdy form, strong and active as a boy; the clear bright eyes, and red lips and shining curly hair, giving such an assurance of health and strength? And do you not recollect how the bounding foot, and the gay young voice, and the merry musical laugh seemed to fill the house and the court with her own quick and joyous spirit, as she darted about in her innocent play or her small housewifery, so lively and so vigorous, so lovely and so beloved? Do you not remem ber, too, how when we stopped to speak to her at that ever-open door, the whole ample kitchen was strewed with her little property, so that you used to liken it to a great babyhouse? Here her kitten, there her doll; on one chair an old copy-book, on another a new sash; her work and needle-book and scissors and thimble put neatly away on her own little table; her straw hat ornamented with a tuft of feathery grasses, or a garland of woodbine, 1 banging carelessly against the wall; and pots of flowers of all sorts of the garden and the feld, from the earliest bud to the latest blossom, ranged in the window, on the dresser, on the mantel shelf, wherever a jug could find room. Every thing spoke of Lizzy, her mother's comfort, her father's delight, the charm and life of the house; and every body loved to hear and see so fair a specimen of healthful and happy childhood. It did one's heart good to pass that open door. But the door is closed now, always closed; and the father, a hale and comely man, of middle age, is become all at once old and bent and broken; and the smiling placid mother looks as if she would never smile again. Nothing has been displaced in that sad and silent dwelling. The straw hat, with its faded garland, still hangs against the wall; the work is folded on the little table, with the small thimble upon it, as if just laid down; jars of withered flowers erowd the mantel and the window;-but the light hath departed; the living flower is gone; poor Lizzy is dead! Are you not sorry for poor, poor Lizzy? "Come very soon, my dear Emily! Tell Colonel L., with our kindest remembrances, that we shall never love him quite so well as he deserves, until he brings you back to us. Come very soon! and in the mean while be sure you send me a full account of yourself and your whereabouts,' and do not fail to repay my brief notices of the simple scenery and humble denizens of our village, by gorgeous stories of oriental wonders, - of the Ganges, the palmettos, the elephants, and the Hindoos. "And now, my dear friend, farewell! GRACE NEVILLE. Two or three winters ago, our little village had the good fortune to have its curiosity excited by the sudden appearance of a lovely and elegant young woman, as an inmate in the But this is too mournful a subject:-we house of Mr. Martin, a respectable farmer in must talk now of the Loddon, the beautiful the place. The pleasure of talking over a Loddon-yes, it still flows; ay, and still over-new-comer in a country village, which, much flows, according to its naughty custom. Only as I love country villages, does, I confess, oclast winter it filled our meadows like a lake; casionally labour under a stagnation of topics, rushed over our mill-dams like a cataract, and played such pranks with the old arch at Yorkpool, that people were fain to boat it betwixt here and Aberleigh; and the bridge having been denounced as dangerous in summer and impassable in winter, is like to cause a dispute between those two grand abstractions, the panish and the county, each of which wishes to turn the cost of rebuilding on the other. By their own account, they are two of the poorest personages in his majesty's domintons; full of debt and difficulty, and exceedingly likely to go to law on the case, by way of amending their condition. The pretty Daughty river! There it flows bright and clear as when we walked by its banks to the old house at Aberleigh, looking as innocent and unconscious as if its victim, the bridge, had not been indicted-No-that's not the word! -presented at the Quarter Sessions; as if a Worshipful committee were not sitting to inquire into its malversations; and an ancient and well-reputed parish and a respectable midland county going together by the ears in consequence of its delinquency. There it flows clear and bright through the beautiful grounds of Aberleigh! The ruined mansion has been estirely pulled down; but the lime-trees re, and the magnificent poplars and the gay derness of shrub and flower. The fishingse has been repaired by the delicate hand if taste, and it is a fairy scene still; a scene ny of its owners and its neighbours, wantthing in my eyes but you to come and Jack at it. must not be lightly estimated. In the present instance the enjoyment was greatly increased by the opportune moment at which it occurred, just before Christmas, so that conjecture was happily afloat in all the parties of that merry time, enlivened the tea-table, and gave zest and animation to the supper. There was, too, a slight shade of mystery, a difficulty in coming at the truth, which made the subject unusually poignant. Talk her over as they might, nobody knew any thing certain of the incognita, or her story; nobody could tell who she was, or whence she came. Mrs. Martin, to whom her neighbours were, on a sudden, most politely attentive in the way of calls and invitations, said nothing more than that Miss Neville was a young lady who had come to lodge at Kinlay-end; and, except at church, Miss Neville was invisible. Nobody could tell what to make of her. Her beauty was, however, no questionable, matter. All the parish agreed on that point. She was in deep mourning, which set off advantageously a tall and full, yet easy and elastic figure, in whose carriage the vigour and firmness of youth and health seemed blended with the elegance of education and good company. Youth and health were the principal characteristics of her countenance. There was health in her bright hazel eyes, with their rich dark eye-lashes; health in the profusion of her glossy brown hair; health in her pure and brilliant complexion; health in her red lips, her white teeth, and the beautiful smile that displayed them; health in her very |