her head lying on her aunt's knee, and looking
up at him from time to time, as if to learn his
face off by heart ; till his glances meeting hers,
made her drop her eyes, and only sigh.

He stopped up late that night with his father,
long after the women had gone to bed. But
not to sleep; for I will answer for it the grey-
haired mother never slept a wink till the late
dawn of the autumn day, and Bessy heard her
uncle come up-stairs with heavy, deliberate
footsteps, and go to the old stocking which served
him for bank; and count out golden guineas—
once he stopped, but again he went on afresh,
as if resolved to crown his gift with liberality.
Another long pause—in which she could but
indistinctly hear continued words, it might have
been advice, it might be a prayer, for it was in
her uncle's voice; and then father and son came
up to bed. Bessy's room was but parted from
her cousin's by a thin wooden partition, and the
last sound she distinctly heard, before her eyes,
tired out with crying, closed themselves in sleep,
was the guineas clinking down upon each other
at regular intervals, as if Benjamin were playing
at pitch and toss with his father's present.

After he was gone, Bessy wished he had asked
her to walk part of the way with him into
Highminster. She was all ready, her things laid out
on the bed, but she could not accompany him
without invitation.

The little household tried to close over the
gap as best they might. They seemed to set
themselves to their daily work with unusual
vigour; but somehow when evening came, there
had been little done. Heavy hearts never make
light work, and there was no telling how much
care and anxiety each had had to bear in secret
in the field, at the wheel, or in the dairy.
Formerly he was looked for every Saturday;
looked for, though he might not come, or if he
came, there were things to be spoken about, that
made his visit anything but a pleasure: still he
might come, and all things might go right, and
then what sunshine, what gladness to those
humble people. But now he was away, and
dreary winter was come on; old folks' sight
fails, and the evenings were long, and sad, in
spite of all Bessy could do or say. And he did
not write so often as he might—so every one
thought; though every one would have been
ready to defend him from either of the others
who had expressed such a thought aloud.
"Surely!" said Bessy to herself, when the first
primroses peeped out in a sheltered and sunny
hedge bank, and she gathered them as she passed
home from afternoon church—"surely there
never will be such a dreary, miserable winter
again as this has been."There had been a
great change in Nathan and Bessy Huntroyd
during this last year. The spring before,
when Benjamin was yet the subject of more
hopes than fears, his father and mother
looked what I may call an elderly middle-
aged couple: people who had a good deal of
hearty work in them yet. Now—it was not
his absence alone that caused the change—they
looked frail and old, as if each day's natural
trouble was a burden more than they could bear.
For Nathan had heard sad reports about his
only child, and had told them solemnly to his
wife, as things too bad to be believed, and yet,
"God help us if indeed he is such a lad as this!"
Their eyes were become too dry and hollow for many
tears; they sat together,hand in hand; and shivered,
and sighed, and did not speak many words, or dare
to look at each other : and then Hester had said,

"We mauna tell th' lass. Young folks' hearts
break wi' a little, and she'd be apt to fancy it
were true." Here the old woman's voice broke
into a kind of piping cry, but she struggled, and
her next words were all right. "We mauna tell
her, he's bound to be fond on her, and mebby, if
she thinks well on him, and loves him, it will
bring him straight."

"God grant it!" said Nathan.

"God shall grant it," said Hester,
passionately moaning out her words; and then
repeating them, alas! with a vain repetition.

"It's a bad place for lying, is Highminster,"
said she, at length, as if impatient of the silence.
"I never knowed such a place for getting up
stories. But Bessy knows nought on, and
nother you nor me belie'es un; that's one
blessing."

But if they did not in their hearts believe
them, how came they to look so sad, and worn,
beyond what mere age could do?

Then came round another year, another
winter, yet more miserable than the last. This
year, with the primroses, came Benjamin; a
bad, hard, flipppant young man, with yet enough
of specious manners and handsome countenance
to make his appearance striking at first to those
to whom the aspect of a London fast young man
of the lowest order is strange and new. Just
at first, as he sauntered in with a swagger and
an air of indifference, which was partly assumed,
partly real, his old parents felt a simple kind of
awe of him, as if he were not their son, but a
real gentleman; but they had too much fine
instinct in their homely natures not to know,
after a very few minutes had passed, that this
was not a true prince.

"Whatten ever does he mean," said Hester
to her niece, as soon as they were alone, "by
a' them maks and wearlocks? And he minces
his words as if his tongue were clipped short,
or split like a magpie's. Hech! London is as
bad as a hot day i' August for spoiling good
flesh; for he were a good-looking lad when he
went up; and now, look at him, with his skin
gone into lines and flourishes, just like first page
on a copy-book!"

"I think he looks a deal better, aunt, for
them new-fashioned whiskers!" said Bessy,
blushing still at the remembrance of the kiss he
had given her on first seeing her—a pledge, she
thought, poor girl, that, in spite of his long silence
in letter-writing, he still looked upon her as his
troth-plight wife. There were things about him
which none of them liked, although they never
spoke about them, yet there was also something
to gratify them all in the way in which he
remained quiet at Nab-end, instead of seeking