dest son's running off with a dairymaid, it being well beknown," they
would observe with severity, "that his mother never would let e'er a one
of the young madams as were suitable to marry him come nigh the house."

The dairymaid belonged to their parish, and so afforded them another
ground of triumph over their rivals. "Besides," they would say, "wasn't
their own church parson--old parson Green that everybody swore
by--wasn't he distinctly heard to say to the young man's father, 'that
he might ha' been expected to do wus'? They didn't see, for their parts,
that aught but good had come of it neither; but as for poor old Madam,
anybody might see that no good ever came nigh her. We must submit
ourselves to the Almighty's will," they would add with reverence. They
couldn't tell why He had afflicted her, but they prayed Him to be
merciful to her in her latter end.

It was in old parson Green's time, the man they all swore by, that they
talked thus; but when parson Craik came, they learned some new words,
and instead of accepting trouble with the religious acquiescence of the
ignorant, they began to wonder and doubt, and presently to offend their
rivals by their fine language. "Mysterious, indeed," they would say, "is
the ways of Providence."

In the meantime the poor old woman who for so many years was the object
of their speculations and their sympathy, lived in all quietness and
humbleness at one end of her long house, and on fine Sundays edified the
congregation by coming to church. Not, however, on foot; her great age
made that too much an exertion for her. She was drawn by her one old
man-servant in a chair on wheels, her granddaughter and her grandson's
widow walking beside her, and her little great-grandson, Peter, who was
supposed to be her heir, bringing up the rear.

Old Madam Melcombe, as the villagers called her. She had a large frame,
but it was a good deal bowed down; her face was wrinkled, and her blue
eyes had the peculiar dimness of extreme old age, yet those who noticed
her closely might detect a remarkable shrewdness in her face; her
faculties were not only perfect, but she loved to save money, and still
retained a high value for, and a firm grip of, her possessions. The land
she left waste was, notwithstanding, precious to her. She had tied up
her gate that her old friends might understand, after her eldest son's
death, that she could not be tortured by their presence and their
sympathy; but she was k