nd and
open door, across which was another hurdle to keep the live stock from
absolute community with the inmates. There being no knocker, she knocked
by means of a short stick which was laid against the post for that
purpose; but nobody attending, she entered the passage, and tried an
inner door.

A slight noise was heard inside, the door opened about an inch, and a
strip of decayed face, including the eye and some forehead wrinkles,
appeared within the crevice.

'Please I have come for the paper,' said Anne.

'O, is it you, dear Anne?' whined the inmate, opening the door a little
further. 'I could hardly get to the door to open it, I am so weak.'

The speaker was a wizened old gentleman, in a coat the colour of his
farmyard, breeches of the same hue, unbuttoned at the knees, revealing a
bit of leg above his stocking and a dazzlingly white shirt-frill to
compensate for this untidiness below. The edge of his skull round his
eye-sockets was visible through the skin, and he had a mouth whose
corners made towards the back of his head on the slightest provocation.
He walked with great apparent difficulty back into the room, Anne
following him.

'Well, you can have the paper if you want it; but you never give me much
time to see what's in en! Here's the paper.' He held it out, but before
she could take it he drew it back again, saying, 'I have not had my share
o' the paper by a good deal, what with my weak sight, and people coming
so soon for en. I am a poor put-upon soul; but my "Duty of Man" will be
left to me when the newspaper is gone.' And he sank into his chair with
an air of exhaustion.

Anne said that she did not wish to take the paper if he had not done with
it, and that she was really later in the week than usual, owing to the
soldiers.

'Soldiers, yes--rot the soldiers! And now hedges will be broke, and
hens' nests robbed, and sucking-pigs stole, and I don't know what all.
Who's to pay for't, sure? I reckon that because the soldiers be come you
don't mean to be kind enough to read to me what I hadn't time to read
myself.'

She would read if he wished, she said; she was in no hurry. And sitting
herself down she unfolded the paper.

'"Dinner at Carlton House"?'

'No, faith. 'Tis nothing to I.'

'"Defence of the country"?'

'Ye may read that if ye will. I hope there will be no billeting in this
parish, or any wild work of that sort; for what would a poor old lamiger
like myself do with so