Paul Ritson was in truth a changed man. His face was pale and haggard, and his eyes were bleared and heavy. He dropped with a listless weariness into the chair that Greta drew up to the fire. When he smiled the lips lagged back to a gloomy repose, and when he laughed the note of merriment rang hollow and fell short. "Just in time for a game with me, my lad!" said the parson. "Greta, fetch the chessboard and box." The board was brought, the pieces fixed; the parson settled himself at his ease, with slippers on the hearth-rug and a handkerchief across his knee. "Do you know, Paul, I heard a great parl about you to-day?" "About me! Where?" asked Paul, without much curiosity in his tone. "At Mr. Proudfoot's smithy, while I was turning the fallows in the meadow down at the crossroads. Little Mr. Oglethorpe was saying that you slept at the Pack Horse, in Keswick, the night before last; but Mr. Job Sheepshanks, the letter-cutter, said nay, and they had high words indeed, wherein Job called Mr. Oglethorpe all but his proper name, and flung away in high dudgeon." Paul moved his pawn and said, "I never slept at the Pack Horse in my life, Mr. Christian." Greta sat knitting at one side of the ingle. The kitten, with a bell attached to a ribbon about its neck, sported with the bows of her dainty slippers. Only the click of the needles, and the tinkle of the bell, and the hollow tick of the great clock in the corner broke the silence. At last Parson Christian drew himself up in his chair. "Well, Paul, man, Paul--deary me, what a sad move! You're going back, back, back; once you could beat me five games to four. Now I can run away with you." The game soon finished, amid a chuckle from the parson, a bantering word from Greta, and a loud, forced laugh from Paul. Parson Christian lifted from a shelf a ponderous tome bound in leather and incased in green cloth. "I must make my day's entry," he said, "and get off to bed. I was astir before day-break this morning." Greta crept up behind the old man, and looked over his shoulder as he wrote: "Nov. 21.--Retired to my lodging-room last night, and commended my all to God, and lay down, and fell asleep; but Peter minded the heifer that was near to calving; so he came and wakened me, and we went down and sealed her, and foddered her, and milked her. Spent all day plowing the low meadow, Peter delving potatoes. Called at the Flying Horse, and sat while I drank one pot of ale and no more, and paid for it. Received ten shillings from Lawyer Bonnithorne for funeral sermon, and one pound two from Bolton charity; also five shillings quarterage from Henry Walmsley, and seven from Robert Atkinson, and a penny to square accounts from Randal Alston, and so retired to my closet at peace with all the world. Blessed be God."