The dairymaid belonged to their parish, and so afforded them another ground of triumph over their rivals.  “Besides,” they would say, “wasn’t their own church parson—­old parson Green that everybody swore by—­wasn’t he distinctly heard to say to the young man’s father, ’that he might ha’ been expected to do wus’?  They didn’t see, for their parts, that aught but good had come of it neither; but as for poor old Madam, anybody might see that no good ever came nigh her.  We must submit ourselves to the Almighty’s will,” they would add with reverence.  They couldn’t tell why He had afflicted her, but they prayed Him to be merciful to her in her latter end.

It was in old parson Green’s time, the man they all swore by, that they talked thus; but when parson Craik came, they learned some new words, and instead of accepting trouble with the religious acquiescence of the ignorant, they began to wonder and doubt, and presently to offend their rivals by their fine language.  “Mysterious, indeed,” they would say, “is the ways of Providence.”

In the meantime the poor old woman who for so many years was the object of their speculations and their sympathy, lived in all quietness and humbleness at one end of her long house, and on fine Sundays edified the congregation by coming to church.  Not, however, on foot; her great age made that too much an exertion for her.  She was drawn by her one old man-servant in a chair on wheels, her granddaughter and her grandson’s widow walking beside her, and her little great-grandson, Peter, who was supposed to be her heir, bringing up the rear.

Old Madam Melcombe, as the villagers called her.  She had a large frame, but it was a good deal bowed down; her face was wrinkled, and her blue eyes had the peculiar dimness of extreme old age, yet those who noticed her closely might detect a remarkable shrewdness in her face; her faculties were not only perfect, but she loved to save money, and still retained a high value for, and a firm grip of, her possessions.  The land she left waste was, notwithstanding, precious to her.  She had tied up her gate that her old friends might understand, after her eldest son’s death, that she could not be tortured by their presence and their sympathy; but she was known sometimes by her grand-daughters to enlarge on the goodness of the land thereabouts, and to express a hope that when Peter’s guardians came into power, they would bring it under the plough again.  She went to church by a little footpath, and always conducted herself with great decorum, though, twice or thrice during the reading of the lessons, she had startled the congregation by standing up with a scared expression of countenance, and looking about her while she leaned on her high staff as if she thought some one had called her; but she was in her ninety-fifth year, and this circumstance, together with the love and pity felt for her, would easily have excused far greater eccentricities.