twenty words to
one of us thereafter, but quietly slept and dreamed her life away, and
on the third day she was gone. This was last winter, the winter of 1664;
and I remember how all that melancholy time the people were greatly
disturbed about the comet that was to be seen, wondering what mischiefs
it should betoken; I saw it myself, but so full was my mind of my
private griefs, I cared not much about ill omens to the State. Indeed,
one thing that soon happened was very distressing to us, and I shall
shortly relate what it was.

CHAPTER VII.

HOW ANDREW CAME TO THE GRANGE BY NIGHT.

It was about a ten days after Mrs. Golding's death, and we were
beginning to feel as if our desolation was a thing that had always been
and always would be, for so I think it often seems when a grief is new.
However desolate we were, we were not destitute; she who was gone had
cared for that, and we found a modest dower secured to each of us,
without injury to Andrew's rightful inheritance of the Grange and the
lands belonging thereto; also we were to continue dwelling in the Grange
till its new master should come home and make such dispositions as
pleased him. But for all this we were greatly perplexed; we had been
long without news of Andrew, and could not tell how to get word to him
of Mrs. Golding's death.

On the day I speak of, we had been teased by a visit from Mrs.
Bonithorne, who, professing great sorrow for our loss, and her own loss
of one whom she called her oldest friend, soon fell to talking of
Andrew, and how his unlucky doings were all owing to our good aunt's
foolishness in entertaining so pestilent a heretic as James Westrop
under her roof.

'I warned her of it,' quoth she; 'I said to her, "You will rue it yet,
Margaret; with such an one you should have no dealings, no, not so much
as to eat," and now see what has come of her perverseness!' and
such-like stuff she said, which moved Grace Standfast to say
disdainfully, when our visitor was gone, 'Yon woman surely owes us a
little grudge, that 'twas our house and not hers which entertained so
rare a monster as a wandering Quaker; she asked me twenty questions
about him the day after, I remember it well; but we hardly had heart to
laugh, though we were sure enough she had given no such warnings as she
spake of. Althea only sighed and said, ''twas an evil day for her when
she first saw that man;' and as she told me, his two appearances to us
haunted her as she w