some facts of interest about the building,
which was to be the scene of his work for many months to come. But the
clerk preferred to talk of people rather than of things, and the
conversation drifted by easy stages to the family with whom Westray had
taken up his abode.

The doubt as to the Joliffe ancestry, in the discussion of which Mr
Sharnall had shown such commendable reticence, was not so sacred to the
clerk. He rushed in where the organist had feared to tread, nor did
Westray feel constrained to check him, but rather led the talk to Martin
Joliffe and his imaginary claims.

"Lor' bless you!" said the clerk, "I was a little boy myself when
Martin's mother runned away with the soldier, yet mind well how it was
in everybody's mouth. But folks in Cullerne like novelties; it's all
old-world talk now, and there ain't one perhaps, beside me and Rector,
could tell you _that_ tale. Sophia Flannery her name was when Farmer
Joliffe married her, and where he found her no one knew. He lived up at
Wydcombe Farm, did Michael Joliffe, where his father lived afore him,
and a gay one he was, and dressed in yellow breeches and a blue
waistcoat all his time. Well, one day he gave out he was to be married,
and came into Cullerne, and there was Sophia waiting for him at the
Blandamer Arms, and they were married in this very church. She had a
three-year-old boy with her then, and put about she was a widow, though
there were many who thought she couldn't show her marriage lines if
she'd been asked for them. But p'raps Farmer Joliffe never asked to see
'em, or p'raps he knew all about it. A fine upstanding woman she was,
with a word and a laugh for everyone, as my father told me many a time;
and she had a bit of money beside. Every quarter, up she'd go to London
town to collect her rents, so she said, and every time she'd come back
with terrible grand new clothes. She dressed that fine, and had such a
way with her, the people called her Queen of Wydcombe. Wherever she
come from, she had a boarding-school education, and could play and sing
beautiful. Many a time of a summer evening we lads would walk up to
Wydcombe, and sit on the fence near the farm, to hear Sophy a-singing
through the open window. She'd a pianoforty, too, and would sing
powerful long songs about captains and moustachers and broken hearts,
till people was nearly fit to cry over it. And when she wasn't singing
she was painting. My old missis had a picture