he Hollow, which tradition says was once
green, and lone, and wild; and there I saw the manufacturer's day-dreams
embodied in substantial stone and brick and ashes--the cinder-black
highway, the cottages, and the cottage gardens; there I saw a mighty
mill, and a chimney ambitious as the tower of Babel. I told my old
housekeeper when I came home where I had been.

"Ay," said she, "this world has queer changes. I can remember the old
mill being built--the very first it was in all the district; and then I
can remember it being pulled down, and going with my lake-lasses
[companions] to see the foundation-stone of the new one laid. The two
Mr. Moores made a great stir about it. They were there, and a deal of
fine folk besides, and both their ladies; very bonny and grand they
looked. But Mrs. Louis was the grandest; she always wore such handsome
dresses. Mrs. Robert was quieter like. Mrs. Louis smiled when she
talked. She had a real, happy, glad, good-natured look; but she had een
that pierced a body through. There is no such ladies nowadays."

"What was the Hollow like then, Martha?"

"Different to what it is now; but I can tell of it clean different
again, when there was neither mill, nor cot, nor hall, except Fieldhead,
within two miles of it. I can tell, one summer evening, fifty years
syne, my mother coming running in just at the edge of dark, almost
fleyed out of her wits, saying she had seen a fairish [fairy] in
Fieldhead Hollow; and that was the last fairish that ever was seen on
this countryside (though they've been heard within these forty years). A
lonesome spot it was, and a bonny spot, full of oak trees and nut trees.
It is altered now."

The story is told. I think I now see the judicious reader putting on his
spectacles to look for the moral. It would be an insult to his sagacity
to offer directions. I only say, God speed him in the quest!

THE END.

ESTABLISHED 1798

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