a matter of fact the
Reddys and the Mountains were a sort of Capulets and Montagues, and had
hated each other for generations. Samson and Abel kept up the ancient
grudge in all its ancient force. They were of the same age within a week
or two, had studied at the same school, and had fought there; had at one
time courted the same girl, had sat within sight of each other Sunday
after Sunday and year after year in the parish church, had each buried
father and mother in the parish churchyard, and in the mind of each the
thought of the other rankled like a sore.

The manner of their surrendering their common courtship was
characteristic of their common hatred. Somewhere about the beginning
of this century a certain Miss Jenny Rusker, of Castle Barfield,
was surrounded by quite a swarm of lovers. She was pretty, she was
well-to-do, for her time and station, she was accomplished--playing the
harp (execrably), working samplers in silk and wool with great diligence
and exactitude, and having read a prodigious number of plays, poems, and
romances. What this lady's heart forged that her mouth did vent, but no
pretty young woman ever looked or sounded foolish to the eyes or ears of
her lovers. Mountain and Eeddy were among her solicitors. She liked them
both, and had not quite made up her mind as to which, if either of them,
she would choose, when suddenly the knowledge of the other's occasional
presence in her sitting-room made the house odious to each, and they
surrendered the chase almost at the same hour. Miss Jenny satisfied
herself with a cousin of her own, married without changing her name,
had children, was passably happy, as the world goes, and lived to be a
profoundly sentimental but inveterate widow. Mountain and Eeddy married
girls they would not otherwise have chosen, and were passably happy
also, except when the sore of ancient hatred was inflamed by a chance
meeting on the corn exchange or an accidental passage of the eyes at
church. They had no better authority for hating each other than that
their fathers had hated each other before them. The fathers had the
authority of the grandfathers, and they, that of the greatgrandfathers.

It was Saturday afternoon. There was a bleak frost abroad, and even the
waters of the brook which divided the two farms were hard frozen. The
sun hung low in the western sky, lustreless as a wafer, but ruddy. The
fields were powdered with thin snow, and the earth was black by contrast
wit