"What can she mean, the old witch?" asked Mistress Evans, the miller's wife, in a frightened whisper. "What does a gipsy ever mean, good mistress?" exclaimed the boatman impatiently. "Had I my will, she should verily have long ere now been put in the stocks." And thoroughly out of temper on behalf of his bridge, he went home, and betook himself in somewhat savage mood to his shoemaking, driving in nails with vicious industry. CHAPTER II. LITTLE MISS PRIMROSE. "A night so dark, I could have scarce conjectured there was earth Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all." --ROBERT BROWNING. During the afternoon, Master Pryce the postman, passing the boatman's cottage on his weekly round, dropped in, as was his wont, for a chat, and over an animated discussion upon the affairs of their king and country Jack forgot his ill-humour, as well as the old gipsy and her evil prognostications, and waxed warm on the subject of Puritanism and the Prayer Book, which book Master Jones had denounced in chapel on the previous Sunday, as "meet fuel for the flame;" a "wicked and blasphemous opinion," said loyal Jack, "which merited nothing less than the stocks or the pillory." But though in his outward bearing Jack professed the profoundest contempt for the old woman's malice, her words returned so forcibly to his mind, after darkness had set in and he was left alone, that he went out in the driving rain and wind, and walked slowly three or four times over his bridge, stamping well with his feet as he went, and leaning heavily upon its slender railings, to assure himself that all was in good repair. And as he felt it swaying beneath him in the gale, he murmured to himself: "'Tis ever the best workmanship that will bend and not break!" And now, but for a feeling of nameless mystery in the air and vague nervousness in his own system, Jack felt tolerably comfortable again. "Nerves," said he to himself, as he looked out from his casement to the dark woods beyond the river, "nerves are curious things indeed--wonderful things at times! Once set them jarring, and in sooth they are as hard to tune up again as my old cracked fiddle. Come, Jack, my man, it was never thy wont to possess nerves, and it is no old vagrant gipsy as shall show you the meaning of them. Indeed you must pull yourself together, and be a man, whatever!--That's no wind though!" he exclaimed, suddenly throwing down the letter Pryce the postman had brought him; "no, nor a shriek from the castle neither. 'Twas a child's cry, as sure as I'm a loyal churchman!--and no upholder of schism, like John Jones," he added with whispered energy. And hurrying out, he groped his way to the river brink, and listened. The cry was repeated, and apparently came from the other side of the river--a little wailing cry, as of a child in pain. Jack's blood ran cold, as he set foot on the bridge, and slowly felt his way across in the thick darkness, and