e, whose leaves tapped incessantly against the lozenged
panes of its barred windows, was almost as familiar in his memory in
after years as the sitting-room at home at the farm.

Dick conferred upon its kindly and garrulous old tenant the brevet rank
of 'Aunt' Jenny, and loved her, telling her, in open-hearted childish
fashion, his thoughts, experiences, and secrets. Naturally, the story of
the fight with the paynim oppressors of beauty came out in his talk soon
after its occurrence, and lost nothing in the telling. Mrs. Jenny would
have found a romance in circumstances much less easily usable to that
end than those of the scion of one house rescuing the daughter of a
rival and inimical line, and here was material enough for foolish fancy.
She cast a prophetic eye into the future, and saw Dick and Julia, man
and maid, reuniting their severed houses in the bonds of love, or doubly
embittering their mutual hatred and perishing--young and lovely victims
to clannish hatred and parental rigour--like Romeo and Juliet.

The boy's account of the fight was given as he sat by her side in her
little pony-trap in the cheerfully frosty morning. Dick chatted gaily as
the shaggy-backed pony trotted along the resounding road with a clatter
of hoofs and a jingle of harness, and an occasional sneeze at the frosty
air. They passed the field of battle on the road, and Dick pointed it
out. Then, as was natural, he turned to the family feud, and retailed
all he had heard from Ichabod, supplemented by information from other
quarters and such additions of fancy as imaginative children and savages
are sure to weave about the fabric of any story which comes in their way
to make tradition generally the trustworthy thing it is.

Mrs. Busker was strong on the family quarrel. A family quarrel was a
great thing in her estimation, almost as good as a family ghost, and
she gave Dick the whole history of the incident of the brook and of many
others which had grown out of it, among them one concerning the death of
a certain Reddy which had tragically come to pass a year or two before
his birth. The said Reddy had been found one November evening stark and
cold at the corner of the parson's spinney, with an empty gun grasped
in his stiffened hand, and a whole charge of small shot in his breast.
Crowner's quest had resulted in a verdict of death by misadventure, and
the generally received explanation was that the young fellow's own gun
had worked the misch