to take 'em to Mr. Stockdale's room?'

'I thought they must be his as they was so muddy,' said Martha humbly.

'You should have left 'em on the clothes-horse,' said the young mistress
severely; and she came upstairs with the garments on her arm, quickly
passed Stockdale's room, and threw them forcibly into a closet at the end
of a passage. With this the incident ended, and the house was silent
again.

There would have been nothing remarkable in finding such clothes in a
widow's house had they been clean; or moth-eaten, or creased, or mouldy
from long lying by; but that they should be splashed with recent mud
bothered Stockdale a good deal. When a young pastor is in the aspen
stage of attachment, and open to agitation at the merest trifles, a
really substantial incongruity of this complexion is a disturbing thing.
However, nothing further occurred at that time; but he became watchful,
and given to conjecture, and was unable to forget the circumstance.

One morning, on looking from his window, he saw Mrs. Newberry herself
brushing the tails of a long drab greatcoat, which, if he mistook not,
was the very same garment as the one that had adorned the chair of his
room. It was densely splashed up to the hollow of the back with
neighbouring Nether-Moynton mud, to judge by its colour, the spots being
distinctly visible to him in the sunlight. The previous day or two
having been wet, the inference was irresistible that the wearer had quite
recently been walking some considerable distance about the lanes and
fields. Stockdale opened the window and looked out, and Mrs. Newberry
turned her head. Her face became slowly red; she never had looked
prettier, or more incomprehensible, he waved his hand affectionately, and
said good-morning; she answered with embarrassment, having ceased her
occupation on the instant that she saw him, and rolled up the coat half-
cleaned.

Stockdale shut the window. Some simple explanation of her proceeding was
doubtless within the bounds of possibility; but he himself could not
think of one; and he wished that she had placed the matter beyond
conjecture by voluntarily saying something about it there and then.

But, though Lizzy had not offered an explanation at the moment, the
subject was brought forward by her at the next time of their meeting. She
was chatting to him concerning some other event, and remarked that it
happened about the time when she was dusting some old clothes that had