He makes hisself too common.  I often tell him so.  Says I, ’Why dost let ’em all put on thee so?  Serve thee right if I was to send thee my pots and pans to mend.’  ‘And so do,’ says he, directly.  ’There’s no art in it, if you can make the sawder, and I can do that, by the Dick and Harry!’ And one day I said to him, ’Do take a look at this fine new cow of mine as cost me twenty-five good shillings and a quart of ale.  What ever is the matter with her?  She looks like the skin of a cow flattened against the board.’  So says he, ’Nay, she’s better drawn than nine in ten; but she wants light and shade.  Send her to my workshop.’  ‘Ay, ay,’ says I; ’thy workshop is like the church-yard; we be all bound to go there one day or t’other.’  Well, sir, if you believe me, when they brought her home and hung her again she almost knocked my eye out.  There was three or four more women looking on, and I mind all on us skreeked a bit, and our hands went up in the air as if one string had pulled the lot; and says Bet Morgan, the carter’s wife, ‘Lord sake, gie me a bucket somebody, and let me milk her!’ ’Nay, but thou shalt milk me,’ said I, and a pint of fourpenny I gave her, then and there, for complimenting of my cow.  Will Hope, he’s everybody’s friend.  He made the Colonel a crutch with his own hands, which the Colonel can use no other now.  Walter swears by him.  Miss Mary dotes on him:  he saved her life in the river when she was a girl.  The very miners give him a good word, though he is very strict with them; and as for Bartley, it’s my belief he owes all his good luck to Will Hope.  And to think he was born in this village, and left it a poor lad; ay, and he came back here one day as poor as Job, seems but t’other day, with his bundle on his back and his poor little girl in his hand.  I dare say I fed them both with whatever was going, poor bodies.”

“What was she like?”

“A poor little wizened thing.  She had beautiful golden hair, though.”

“Like Miss Bartley’s?”

“Something, but lighter.”

“Have you ever seen her since?”

“No; and I never shall.”

“Who knows?”

“Nay, sir.  I asked him after her one day when he came home for good.  He never answered me, and he turned away as if I had stung him.  She has followed her mother, no doubt.  And so now she is gone he’s well-to-do; and that is the way of it, sir.  God sends mouths where there is no meat, and meat where there’s no mouths.  But He knows best, and sees both worlds at once.  We can only see this one—­that’s full of trouble.”

Monckton now began to yawn, for he wanted to be alone and think over the schemes that floated before him now.

“You are sleepy, sir,” said Mrs. Dawson.  “I’ll go and see your bed is all right.”

He thanked her and filled her glass.  She tossed it off like a man this time, and left him to doze in his chair.

Doze, indeed!  Never did a man’s eyes move to and fro more restlessly.  Every faculty was strung to the utmost.