of his pocket and gave her some to eat. The
girl asked her stepmother to go out into
the yard, and see if there was any one near
who might observe her leaving. But there was
no one; so the lovers stole out of the house,
after Maria had kissed and shaken hands with
her stepmother, her sister Ann, and her step-
brother, a little boy of ten. Ann had often
quarrelled with her sister — jealous of her
dress and of her lover — but she forgot all that
in the sorrow of that sudden parting. The
lovers left about half-past twelve, stealthily by
different doors; she by the back door, the
field, and the fen; he by the door opening on the
road. They met in the road; the stepmother
saw them meet; they both got over a gate
and went across the Hare-hill field, past the
hedges already in bud, in the direction of the
Red Barn, which was two fields distant, and
where Maria's things in the brown holland
bag had been left by Corder. The disguised
girl, still in tears, and the sullen lover, with the
odious, sly, malign face, disappeared in the
distance, where the green boughs grew greyer
and fainter towards the low horizon.

Yet it was a singular thing, too, that little
George, out in the fields that very day that
William and Maria drove to Ipswich to get
married, ran in from play about four o'clock,
declaring he had just seen William in a
velveteen jacket, and carrying a pickaxe on his
shoulder. He seemed going home over the
corner of Brandfield, and went down the
Thistly-lane close to the Red Barn. The boy
had good eyes, and was not twenty rods off;
it scarcely seemed likely that he could be
mistaken.

On Saturday, Maria's stepmother saw Corder;
he was in his sick brother's room, and she
did not speak to him. On Monday he came
to the Martens' house about, nine in the morning,
and the first question of course was:

"Well, William, what have you done with
Maria?"

He replied:

"I have left her at Ipswich. I have got her
a comfortable place. She is going down with
Miss Rowland to the water-side."

The woman's motherly anxiety was again busy.

"Why, William," she said, " what will she
do for clothes?"

Corder replied:

"Miss Rowland has got plenty, and would
not let me send for any." He added: " I have
got a licence, but it must go to London to be
signed, so I cannot marry until a month or six
weeks; but I have changed a cheque for
twenty pounds, and given her the money."

The conversation continued:

"Which way did you go?"

"By Stratford."

"Where did she dress?"

"She put her things on in the barn, and
threw the great-coat over them to hide her
till she could get into a by-lane. The great-
coat and hat were tucked into the seat of the
box, and she put her own hat on."

One day, a week after, Mrs. Marten

confronted Corder with what the boy had told
her, wishing him to explain the strange delay.
"George saw you go down the Thistly-lane
with a pickaxe on your shoulder."

"Indeed that was not me," was the ready
explanation; " that was Tom Acres, who was
planting trees on Mr. Hoy's hill."

There was, of course, an end of the matter.

On the 17th of July, 1827, at Polstead Fair
time, Corder's brother James died. Mrs. Marten
was at the funeral, and observed that William
Corder had Maria's umbrella in his hand. She
said to Corder afterwards:

"Why, William, you had got Maria's
umbrella at your brother James's funeral."

He immediately said: " It was not hers, but
one belonging to Deborah Pryke, and like hers."

She afterwards again recognised it, and
Corder then said he had been over to Ipswich
to see Maria, and she had lent it him, as it
rained hard. This was natural enough, and yet
it was singular his denying the umbrella to be
Maria's at first.

From July to September Corder strolled into
the Martens' just as usual, on his way to market
or shooting, or from his fields and barn.
Sometimes he came two or three times a day. He
described Maria to the old people as " purely
well," and said that at Michaelmas he should
bring her home to his farm. It was odd,
however, that Maria never wrote to her father,
stepmother, nor sister; but Corder explained that
she had an obstinate gathering on her hand, and
that prevented her.

About this time, Mr. Peter Mathews, Maria's
former lover, came on a visit to Polstead, and
had several interviews with Corder, being
anxious about a letter he (Mathews) had posted
to Maria on the 3rd of January, 1827, and
in which he had enclosed five pounds. Mr.
Mathews left Polstead on the 9th of August.
On that day, Corder told Mr. Mathews that he
had received a letter from him to Maria, but
did not know where to forward it. He thought
she was somewhere near Yarmouth. There
was some concealment. Mr. Mathews grew
angry, and told Corder that he was deceiving
him, and that the letter must be forwarded.
Corder promised to do his best, and they parted.

Now this statement that Maria was then near
Yarmouth could not have been true, because,
one day in May, Corder had called at the house
of a labourer named Stow, who lived at the
nearest cottage to the Red Barn, and borrowed
an old spade of the man's wife, at the same time
naming another place as Maria's residence, so
near that he could see her any day he liked.

On August the 26th, Corder wrote a letter
to Mr. Mathews, and told him that Maria was
at Herlingbury, near Yarmouth, but that the
gathering on her hand still prevented her writing.
The letter concluded thus:

"P.S. I have already enclosed your letter for
Maria in one of my own, which I shall post
with this immediately, and beg permission to
add that I have fully determined to make Maria