she felt, oh! so sick at heart. Like a wounded hare that creeps into quiet ambush, and lies down on the dry clover to die, she had stolen away from all this noisy happiness; but her heart's joy was draining away. In her wistful eyes there was something almost cruel in this bustling merriment, in this flaunting gayety, in this sweet summer day itself.
The old charcoal-burner had stepped up to where the girl knelt with far-away eyes.
"Mercy," he said, "I've wanted a word with you this many a day."
"With me, father?"
The girl rose to her feet. There was a look of uneasiness in her face.
"You've lost your spirits – what's come of them?"
"Me, father?"
The assumed surprise was in danger of breaking down.
"Not well, Mercy – is that it?"
He took her head between his hard old hands, and stroked her hair as tenderly as a mother might have done.
"Oh, yes, father; quite well, quite."
Then there was a little forced laugh. The lucent eyes were full of a dewy wistfulness.
"Any trouble, Mercy?"
"What trouble, father?"
"Nay, any trouble – trouble's common, isn't it?"
The old man's voice shook slightly, and his hand trembled on the girl's head.
"What have I to trouble me!" said Mercy, in a low voice nigh to breaking.
"Well, you know best," said the charcoal-burner. Then he put his hand under the girl's chin and lifted her face until her unwilling eyes looked into his. The scrutiny appeared to console him, and a smile played over his battered features. "Maybe I was wrong," he thought. "Folk are allus clattering."
Mercy made another forced little laugh, and instantly the Laird Fisher's face saddened.
"They do say 'at you're not the same heartsome little lass," he said.
"Do they? Oh, but I am quite happy! You always say people are busybodies, don't you, father?"
The break-down was imminent.
"Why, Mercy, you're crying."
"Me – crying!" The girl tossed her head with, a pathetic gesture of gay protestation. "Oh, no; I was laughing – that was it."
"There are tears in your eyes, anyways."
"Tears? Nonsense, father! Tears? Didn't I tell you that your sight was failing you – ey, didn't I, now?"
It was of no use to struggle longer. The fair head fell on the heaving breast, and Mercy sobbed.
The old man looked at her through a blinding mist in his hazy eyes. "Tell me, my little lassie, tell me," he said.
"Oh, it's nothing," said Mercy. She had brushed away the tears and was smiling.
The Laird Fisher shook his head.
"It's nothing, father – only – "
"Only – what?"
"Only – oh, it's nothing!"
"Mercy, my lass," said the Laird Fisher, and the tears stood now in his own dim eyes, "Mercy, remember if owt goes wrong with a girl, and her mother is under the grass, her father is the first she should come to and tell all."
The old man had seated himself on a stout block cut from a trunk, and was opening the basket, when there was a light, springy step on the road.
"So you fire to-night, Matthew?"
An elderly man leaned over the stile and smiled.
"Nay, Mr. Bonnithorne, there's ower much nastment in the weather yet."
The gentleman took off his silk hat and mopped his forehead. His hair was thin and of a pale yellow, and was smoothed flat on his brow.
"You surprise me! I thought the weather perfect. See how blue the sky is."
"That doesn't argy. It might be better with never a blenk of blue. It was rayder airy yesterday, and last night the moon got up as blake and yellow as May butter."
The smile was perpetual on the gentleman's face. It showed his teeth constantly.
"You dalesmen are so weather-wise."
The voice was soft and womanish. There was a little laugh at the end of each remark.
"We go by the moon in firing, sir," the charcoal-burner answered, "Last night it rose sou'-west, and that doesn't mean betterment, though it's quiet enough now. There'll be clashy weather before nightfall."
The girl strayed away into the thicket, and startled a woodcock out of a heap of dead oak leaves. The gentleman followed her with his eyes. They were very small and piercing eyes, and they blinked frequently.
"Your daughter does not look very well, Matthew."
"She's gayly, sir; she's gayly," said the charcoal-burner shortly, his mouth in his can of tea.
The gentleman smiled from the teeth out. After a pause, he said: "I suppose it isn't pleasant when one of your hurdles is blown down, and the charcoal burning," indicating the wooden hurdles which had been propped about the half-built charcoal stack.
"Ey, it's gay bad wark, to be sure – being dragged into the fire."
The dog had risen with a startled movement. Following the upward direction of the animal's nose, the gentleman said, "Whose sheep are those on the ghyll yonder?"
"Auld Mr. Ritson's, them herdwicks."
The sheep were on a ridge of shelving rock.
"Dangerous spot, eh?"
"Ey, it's a bent place. They're verra clammersome, the black-faced sorts."
"I'll bid you good-day, Matthew." The yellow-haired elderly gentleman was moving off. He walked with a jerk and a spring on his toes. "And mind you take your daughter to the new doctor at Keswick," he said at parting.
"It's not doctoring that'll mend Mercy," the charcoal-burner muttered, when the other had gone.
CHAPTER III
Josiah Bonnithorne was quite without kinspeople or connections. His mother had been one of two sisters who lived by keeping a small confectioner's shop in Whitehaven, and were devoted Methodists. The sisters had formed views as to matrimony, and they enjoyed a curious similarity of choice. They were to be the wives of preachers. But the opportunity was long in coming, and they grew elderly. At length the younger sister died, and so solved the problem of her future. The elder sister was left for two years more alone with her confectionery. Then she married a stranger who had come to one of the pits as gangsman. It was a sad falling off. But at all events the gangsman was a local preacher, and so the poor soul who took him for husband had effected a compromise with her cherished ideal. It turned put that he was a scoundrel as well, and had a wife living elsewhere. This disclosure abridged
