The butter was made, the noonday dinner cleared away, Dorothy 'cleaned up' for the afternoon, and seated at the table cutting up some bits of old printed calico for a patchwork quilt. When she caught sight of Bryda at the open door she called out,-- 'Where have you been to? Dinner is done an hour ago. P'r'aps you have had yours at Mistress Henderson's?' This with a sniff of contempt. 'You are mighty partial to these Hendersons, I know I can't abide them.' Instead of taking any notice of these remarks, Bryda asked,-- 'Where's grandfather?' 'At his business, of course. Another lamb is dead, and another ewe past hope. Everything is gone crooked. The last brood of chicks are dying fast as they can. It's all along with Goody Fenton's evil eye. I said so when she sat in the porch Lady-day. I told you you was feeding a bad old woman, and I was right.' Bryda gave a little incredulous laugh. 'I should feed her again,' she said, 'if she came this way, poor miserable old creature!' 'Wicked old wretch, she'll end in the ducking stool, and serve her right. I'd like to be by and see it, that's all.' Bryda's imaginative nature had a vein of superstition in it. She was not altogether sure that witchcraft had died out of the land, and she rather liked to hear the stories of elves and fairies, good spirits which made those dark rings on the turf by their dances, when all the rest of the world were asleep. There was a fascination for her in the notion of a world of little mysterious fairies, who cradled themselves in the deep blue bells of the campanules, and lay in the heart of the tall white lilies, powdering their airy garments with gold, and flying through the air of the still summer nights on the backs of the shy, spotted moths which blundered over the moor, when none were there to see, in chase of a will-of-the-wisp, whose lantern, darting hither and thither, lured them on. She stood thinking for a moment over all the run of ill luck to which Dorothy referred, and then her thoughts went back to the cause of all this trouble, a crime of which she had never known before--her father's sin. 'The sins of the fathers are visited on the children.' Was it to be so in her case and Betty's--Betty, whose wailing cry struck her grandfather's ear when he returned from his sad errand at Bristol, and had parted from his only son for ever? Then there came over Bryda that strange regret for the ignorance of yesterday, as bliss when compared with the bitter knowledge of to-day. But with the knowledge came tender regret, the longing to remedy the evil and efface the stain of disgrace from the name she bore.