VOL. I.

CHAPTER I.

“What are the joy bells a-ringing for, Simon?” said an old woman, coming briskly out to the door of one of the pretty cottages in the pretty village of Arden, on a pleasant morning of early summer, when all the leaves were young, and the first freshness of the year was over the world. “There’s ne’er a one married as I knows on, and it aint Whitsuntide, nor Holmfirth fair, nor——”

“It’s the young Squire, stoopid,” said the old clerk, gruffly, leaning his arms upon the little paling of the tiny garden and looking at her. “He’s come home.”

What he really did say was “he’s coom whoam;” but the reader will be so kind as take it for granted that Simon Molyneaux was an old Lancashire man, and talked accordingly, without giving a pen not too familiar with the dialect the trouble of putting in all the o’s that are necessary. Simon said coom, and he said loove, and moother; but as there is no moral meaning in the double letter, let us consent to leave it out.

“The young Squire!” said the old woman, with a start.

She was a tidy fresh old woman, with cheeks of a russet colour, half brown half red, yet soft, despite all their wrinkles—cheeks that children laid their little faces up to without feeling any difference of texture; and eyes which had stolen back during these years deeper into their sockets, but yet were bright and full of suppressed sunshine. She had a little shawl pinned over her print gown, and a great white apron, which shone in the sun, and made the chief light in the little picture. Simon’s rugged countenance looking at her was all brown, with a deep dusky red on the tops of the cheekbones; his face was as full of cross-hatching as if he had been an old print. His eyes were deeper than were hers, but still at the bottom of the wrinkled caves they abode in had a spark of light in each of them. In short, there was sufficient resemblance between them still to show that Simon and Sarah were brother and sister. A young woman of four and twenty came to the door of the next cottage at the sound of his voice, and opening it, went in again, as if her duty was done. She was Simon’s daughter and housekeeper, who was not fond of gossip, and the two kindred households were next door to each other. It was a very pretty village, much encouraged to keep itself tidy, and to cultivate flowers, and do everything that is proper in its condition of life, by the young lady at the Hall. The houses had been improved, but in an unobtrusive way. They were not painfully white-washed, but showed here and there a gleam of red brick in a thin place. The roses and the honeysuckles were not always neatly trained, and there was even an old shawl thrust into a b