But Vara was constantly mindful of Cleg. She prayed for him night and morning. She remembered all his goodness, and she wished that he could oftener come to see her. But in the meantime it was undoubtedly pleasant to have some one at hand, so ready to help with sympathy for herself and abuse of the enemy as Kit Kennedy. The lad and the girl stood awhile at the well, leaning elbows upon the dyke, while Vara confided to Kit all the morning enormities of Mistress McWalter, and Kit bade her be of good cheer, for there was a good time coming for them both. And also, doubtless, a very bad time for Beelzebubba. It always was so in the story books. "How splendid," said Kit, "if the devil were just to come for her as he did for poor Faust! He will some day, you may depend. Beelzebubba would be coming after me with a stick. She would run on and on, getting nearer and nearer to the barn end. I would show the devil exactly where to wait for her. Then I should put my hat on a stick and she would come, crawling, crawling slowly—to get a whack at me. By-and-bye she would get to the corner, and then—_pouch!_ the devil would jump at her and catch her, the earth fly open, and nothing be left of Beelzebubba but a smell of sulphur, as there is after a bee-killing." The vision was monstrously comfortable as Kit painted it. But Vara did not laugh. "I think it's wicked to speak that gate," she said. "What?" said Kit, hardly able to believe his ears, yet scenting a new and unsuspected perfection in his lady Gloriana; "it is only my aunt. It is Beelzebubba." Vara shook her head. She could not give reasons, but she did not think such talk could be right even to imagine. "She is no that ill after a', if you consider that she keeps us," she said. Kit did not know that Vara had known intimately a far worse woman than Mistress McWalter. At the door Kit gave the cans of water to Vara, brimming full as he had carried them, but silently, lest his aunt should hear from her bed above. He touched Vara's hand lightly for reward. For he was a boy as full of sentiment as his books were primed with it. He had brought a dozen of his father's volumes with him, and though his aunt daily prophesied their destruction by fire, Kit thought that she knew better than to do that. But, while Vara had been gone to the well for the water, momentous things had been happening in the privacy of the chamber shared by Mistress McWalter and her husband. The worm had turned. But, alas! even when worms turn, they do not gain much by it. Except that perhaps they may assist the early bird to wriggle down its breakfast a little more easily. Mistress McWalter had gone storming along her devious way of abuse after Vara's departure. "I wish ye wad let that lassie alane!" suddenly broke in John McWalter, awaking out of his deep silence at the thirtieth repetition of the phrase "impident madam of the street." "The lassie's weel eneuch, so far as I see, gin ye wad only let her alane!"