t the squire would not. That very week he sent for a barrel-
organ that would play two-and-twenty new psalm-tunes, so exact and
particular that, however sinful inclined you was, you could play nothing
but psalm-tunes whatsomever. He had a really respectable man to turn the
winch, as I said, and the old players played no more.'

* * * * *

'And, of course, my old acquaintance, the annuitant, Mrs. Winter, who
always seemed to have something on her mind, is dead and gone?' said the
home-comer, after a long silence.

Nobody in the van seemed to recollect the name.

'O yes, she must be dead long since: she was seventy when I as a child
knew her,' he added.

'I can recollect Mrs. Winter very well, if nobody else can,' said the
aged groceress. 'Yes, she's been dead these five-and-twenty year at
least. You knew what it was upon her mind, sir, that gave her that
hollow-eyed look, I suppose?'

'It had something to do with a son of hers, I think I once was told. But
I was too young to know particulars.'

The groceress sighed as she conjured up a vision of days long past.
'Yes,' she murmured, 'it had all to do with a son.' Finding that the van
was still in a listening mood, she spoke on:--

THE WINTERS AND THE PALMLEYS

'To go back to the beginning--if one must--there were two women in the
parish when I was a child, who were to a certain extent rivals in good
looks. Never mind particulars, but in consequence of this they were at
daggers-drawn, and they did not love each other any better when one of
them tempted the other's lover away from her and married him. He was a
young man of the name of Winter, and in due time they had a son.

'The other woman did not marry for many years: but when she was about
thirty a quiet man named Palmley asked her to be his wife, and she
accepted him. You don't mind when the Palmleys were Longpuddle folk, but
I do well. She had a son also, who was, of course, nine or ten years
younger than the son of the first. The child proved to be of rather weak
intellect, though his mother loved him as the apple of her eye.

'This woman's husband died when the child was eight years old, and left
his widow and boy in poverty. Her former rival, also a widow now, but
fairly well provided for, offered for pity's sake to take the child as
errand-boy, small as he was, her own son, Jack, being hard upon
seventeen. Her poor neighbour could do no better than let the child go
there. And to th