tten. Tell the
tale orderly, Lucy; begin at the beginning with "Once upon a time there
lived two sisters; the elder was a fool, but the younger one loved
her"'--and before I could say a word she had slipt away.

I sat awhile, too much disquieted to write, listening against my will
for the heavy sounds that told how the dead man next door was being
carried forth and laid in the cart; but the thing lumbered away at last,
its cracked bell tinkling dolefully; and I found courage to take to my
work.

But to begin at the beginning is not so easy, especially for one so
unskilful with her pen as I. And who shall say what are the beginnings
of the things that befall us? Perhaps they lie far off, long before our
little life itself began.

CHAPTER I.

HOW WE WERE VISITED BY TWO OF OUR KINSFOLK, OUR FATHER BEING DEAD; AND
HOW THEY BEHAVED THEMSELVES TOWARD US.

Think, however, that the troubles that now lie upon us might not have
been ours had not our father died when he did, which was the cause of
our being taken into the house of our mother's sister, Mrs. Margaret
Golding;--a happy thing we then thought it, that she would receive us,
for we were in great straits;--so I will begin my history at that sad
period.

Our father, William Dacre, was indeed a gentleman, born to a competent
estate, and married into an honest stock and to some fortune, but his
fair prospects were all blighted and our mother's money well-nigh wasted
before he died. To his great loss, he stood steadily for the king
against the Parliament all through the late Rebellion, as he would ever
call it; and, our mother's people being very stiff on the other side,
and she dying while we were little children, we were sundered from them
while our father lived. He took such care of us as he could, striving to
breed us up like gentlewomen; sometimes we lived with him in London
lodgings, sometimes were left at his manor-house of Milthorpe; but the
last two years of his life were very uneasy to him and to us.

For when the young king, Charles the Second, was brought in again, five
years agone, our father was drawn up to Court by some I will not name,
who tempted him with hopes of preferments and rewards to recompense his
loyalty. He wasted his means much through the ill counsel of these false
friends, but obtained no fruit of their promises, and at last he died
suddenly; whether broken-hearted or not I leave to the judgment of God,
and to the consciences of