in allotments amongst the poor; and his daughter
spent almost what she pleased in clothing-clubs, and sick-clubs,
and the school, without a word from him. Whenever he did
remonstrate, she managed to get what she wanted out of the
house-money, or her own allowance.

We must make acquaintance with such other of the inhabitants as
it concerns us to know in the course of the story; for it is
broad daylight, and the villagers will be astir directly. Folk
who go to bed before nine, after a hard day's work, get into the
habit of turning out soon after the sun calls them. So now,
descending from the Hawk's Lynch, we will alight at the east end
of Englebourn, opposite the little white cottage which looks out
at the end of the great wood, near the village green.

Soon after five on that bright Sunday morning, Harry Winburn
unbolted the door of his mother's cottage, and stepped out in his
shirt-sleeves on to the little walk in front, paved with pebbles.
Perhaps some of my readers will recognize the name of an old
acquaintance, and wonder how he got here; so let us explain at
once. Soon after our hero went to school, Harry's father had died
of a fever. He had been a journeyman blacksmith, and in the
receipt, consequently, of rather better wages than generally fall
to the lot of the peasantry, but not enough to leave much of a
margin over current expenditure. Moreover, the Winburns had
always been open-handed with whatever money they had; so that all
he left for his widow and child, of worldly goods, was their "few
sticks" of furniture, L5 in the savings bank, and the money from
his burial-club which was not more than enough to give him a
creditable funeral--that object of honorable ambition to all the
independent poor. He left, however, another inheritance to them,
which is in price above rubies, neither shall silver be named in
comparison thereof,--the inheritance of an honest name, of which
his widow was proud, and which was not likely to suffer in her
hands.

After the funeral, she removed to Englebourn, her own native
village, and kept her old father's house till his death. He was
one of the woodmen to the Grange, and lived in the cottage at the
corner of the wood in which his work lay. When he, too, died,
hard times came on Widow Winburn. The steward allowed her to keep
on the cottage. The rent was a sore burden to her, but she would
sooner have starved than leave it. Parish relief was out of the
question for her father