It was Tuesday, April 28th, something more than a fortnight after the affair at Rawfolds, and I still kept my room but not my bed. I had seen nothing all this time of my cousin George, and took it hard that he should not have come near me, but found excuses for him in the thought that perhaps he feared to bring notice on our house by being seen to visit it. Martha that night had gone into the village to meet the carrier's cart by which my mother expected sundry things that she had ordered from Huddersfield. It drew late, and my mother began to fidget and to worrit about the difficulty of getting a servant that would not tarry to gossip whenever sent an errand and the readiness with which young women lent themselves to gallivanting, so different from what it was when she was a girl, when, she gave Mary and me to understand, a self-respecting maid entrenched herself in a barricade of frigid reserve that only the most intrepid, the most persistent and the most respectful approaches could surmount. About nine o'clock, however, Martha came home, and my mother called to her to come upstairs to give an account of herself, and presently we heard her panting up the steps. She dropped into the first chair she came to-- "Oh! my poor side," she gasped. "That broo 'll be the death on me yet. Such a pain as awn got an' sich a gettin' up th' hill as never wor, an' th' pack hauf as heavy agen as ever it had used to be, an' me awmost running, all th' way for fear sum'dy sud be afore me an' no one to oppen th' door to 'em. Aw do believe aw'st faint." And indeed Martha was in a very bad way. "If yo' didn't stop talkin' wi' every young felly tha' met at's nowt better to do nor be tittle-tattlin' wi' ony idle wench he meets, tha could tak' thi time an' not come home an hour late an' lookin' as if tha'd been rolled i' th' hedge bottom, a sight not fit to be seen in a decent house," said my mother severely. "Oh! Mrs. Bamforth, God forgive yo' those words. Yo'll live to repent 'em, an' yo'll never die easy till yo'n said so, an' me that keeps misen respectable tho' sore tempted." Now if ever kindly Nature laboured to shield a helpless virgin from the craft and allurements of man, it had so laboured on behalf of honest Martha. "But p'r'aps yo' dunnot want to be hearing th' news, an' aw'm sure aw can do wi' all th' wind awn got i'stead o' was-tin' it wheer its noan wanted. So aw'll just put th' shop stuff away an' yo'll happen count yo'r change an' I'st go to bed, for it's little supper aw'st want to neet or for mony a neet to come, if we live to see another neet. But yo' needn't be so sure o' that. It's more nor likely we'st all be murdered i' our beds, an' th' mester and 'Siah away when they're most wanted." "What is it's upset yo', Martha?" asked Mary, giving Martha a little cold tea which had been left in the pot. "It's about Edmund Eastwood."