ted Moll, beginning to
recover her good humour, and flashing a smiling glance into the squinty
eye fixed somewhere about her forehead. "Ay, an' what else?" she
demanded, determined to take full advantage of her husband's unusually
bland mood.

"I'll buy you a gold ring too, my girl--one o' them real shiners,"
promised Joe, thinking that as he was in for the penny he might as well
pledge himself to the pound. "Ah! that makes you sit up, I'm thinkin',"
and the generous man gave his wife a playful poke in the ribs.

"Reely an' truly, Joe, fair an' square? A true di'mon', an' none o' your
sham bits o' glass?" cried Moll in ecstasy.

"Fair an' square, my woman; a real di'mon' as big's a pea, Moll. There's
my hand on't, if you just help me through wi' this little business. You
can, you know, if you like."

"So help me bob!" said Moll quite solemnly, and the well-matched pair
shook hands over their guilty compact. And thus Moll, who in her better
moods might have befriended the children, pledged herself, for sake of
vanity and greed, to work her hardest for their undoing.

Twilight was drawing in when the canal-boat stopped at Engleton, the
last stage on the journey before reaching Barchester. It was a tiny
village, nestling at the foot of a range of undulating hills that rose,
plateau after plateau, until their summits seemed to meet the sky. The
wharf was crowded as usual at that slack evening hour. And in the babel
of voices, banging of boxes, shifting of stuff, and general confusion,
our little travellers, rested and refreshed by their long sleep and the
remainder of the provisions which they had consumed in the cabin, had no
difficulty in stealing off the boat and away from the wharf without
attracting any notice, except from two persons, a man and woman--Joe
Harris and his wife Moll, who did not lose sight of them for a moment,
but followed hard upon their heels.

"Look, Joan!" cried Darby, as they turned their faces towards the hills.
"See, we're near the Happy Land now!" and the lad pointed to the golden
radiance that glowed in the sky and bathed the peaks behind which the
sun had only lately sunk from sight. "That's the light from the city.
They've opened the gates because they know we're coming.

"Hurry, lovey! Here, take my arm. That's what father used to say when
mother was tired; I 'member quite well. It's just a little bit further
now. In one of my Sunday books there's a picture of Christian climbing a
hi