ter was a buxom, hearty woman, well liked by her
fellow-servants. Her parents lived in the village, and she had been six
years with the Gaunts, and her honest heart clung to them. She took to
crying; used to burst out in the middle of her work, or while conversing
with fitful cheerfulness on ordinary topics.

One day Griffith found her crying, and Ryder consoling her as carelessly
and contemptuously as possible.

"Heyday, lasses!" said he; "what is your trouble?"

At this Jane's tears flowed in a stream, and Ryder made no reply, but
waited.

At last, and not till the third or fourth time of asking, Jane blurted
out that she had got the sack; such was her homely expression,
dignified, however, by honest tears.

"What for?" asked Griffith kindly.

"Nay, sir," sobbed Jane, "that is what I want to know. Our dame ne'er
found a fault in me; and now she does pack me off like a dog. Me that
have been here this six years, and got to feel at home. What will
father say? He'll give me a hiding. For two pins I'd drown myself in the
mere."

"Come, you must not blame the mistress," said the sly Ryder. "She is a
good mistress as ever breathed: 't is all the priest's doings. I'll tell
you the truth, master, if you will pass me your word I sha'n't be sent
away for it."

"I pledge you my word as a gentleman," said Griffith.

"Well then, sir, Jane's fault is yours and mine. She is not a Papist;
and that is why she is to go. How I come to know, I listened in the next
room, and heard the priest tell our dame she must send away two of us,
and have Catholics. The priest's word it is law in this house. 'T was in
March he gave the order: Harriet, she went in May, and now poor Jane is
to go--for walking to church behind _you_, sir. But there, Jane, I
believe he would get our very master out of the house if he could; and
then what would become of us all?"

Griffith turned black, and then ashy pale, under this venomous tongue,
and went away without a word, looking dangerous.

Ryder looked after him, and her black eye glittered with a kind of
fiendish beauty.

Jane, having told her mind, now began to pluck up a little spirit. "Mrs.
Ryder," said she, "I never thought to like you so well";--and, with
that, gave her a great, hearty, smacking kiss; which Ryder, to judge by
her countenance, relished, as epicures albumen. "I won't cry no more.
After all, this house is no place for us that be women; 't is a fine
roost, to be sure! where the