, turning it in his hand; "but it seems a pity to fritter it away in
paying bills; and," in a lower tone, "I should like to give it to
Evelyn. I hear she has refused to wear any of Sir John's jewels on her
wedding-day, but perhaps, if you were to ask her--she and I are old
friends--she might make an exception in favor of the crescent."

And she did.

* * * * *

SIR CHARLES DANVERS.

CHAPTER I.

"Dear heart, Miss Ruth, my dear, now don't ye be a-going yet, and me
that hasn't set eyes on ye this month and more--and as hardly hears a
body speak from morning till night."

"Come, come, Mrs. Eccles, I am always finding people sitting here. I
expect to see the latch go every minute."

"Well, and if they do; and some folks are always a-dropping in, and
a-setting theirselves down, and a clack-clacking till a body can't get a
bit of peace! And the things they say! Eh? Miss Ruth, the things I have
heard folks say, a setting as it might be there, in poor Eccles his old
chair by the chimley, as the Lord took him in."

To the uninitiated, Mrs. Eccles's allusion might have seemed to refer to
photography. But Ruth knew better; a visitation from the Lord being
synonymous in Slumberleigh Parish with a fall from a ladder, a stroke of
paralysis, or the midnight cart-wheel that disabled Brown when returning
late from the Blue Dragon "not quite hisself."

"Lor'!" resumed Mrs. Eccles, with an extensive sigh, "there's a deal of
talk in the village now," glancing inquisitively at the visitor, "about
him as succeeds to old Mr. Dare; but I never listen to their tales."

They made a pleasant contrast to each other, the neat old woman, with
her shrewd spectacled eyes and active, hard-worked fingers, and the
young girl, tranquil, graceful, sitting in the shadow, with her slender
ungloved hands in her lap.

They were not sitting in the front parlor, because Ruth was an old
acquaintance; but Mrs. Eccles _had_ a front parlor--a front parlor with
the bottled-up smell in it peculiar to front parlors; a parlor with a
real mahogany table, on which photograph albums and a few select volumes
were symmetrically arranged round an inkstand, nestling in a very choice
wool-work mat; a parlor with wax-flowers under glass shades on the
mantle-piece, and an avalanche of paper roses and mixed paper herbs in
the fireplace.

Ruth knew that sacred apartment well. She knew the name of each of the
books; sh