"Lor', miss, the very one as I have missed! Had un got a red cross, thick to one side--the Lord only knows what a fool I be, to carry on with such rum-tums now; however I'll have hold of he--and zummat more, ere I be done with it." Here the Carrier rubbed his mouth on his sleeve, as he always did to stop himself. He was not going to publish the family disgrace till he had avenged it. "But now, miss, not another word you say. Inside of them sacks you go to sleep; the Lord knows you want it dearly; and fall away you can't nohow. Scratched you be to that extreme in getting out of Satan's den, that tallow candles dropped in water is what I must see to. None on 'em knows it, no, not one on 'em. Man or horse, it cometh all the same. It taketh a man to do it, though." "I should like to see a horse do it," said Grace; and her sleepy smile passed into sleep. Eager as she was to be in her father's arms, the excitement, and the exertion, and the unwonted shaking, and passage through the air, began to tell their usual tale. This was the very thing the crafty Carrier longed to bring about. It left him time to consider how to meet two difficulties. The first was to get her through Beckley without any uproar of the natives; the second, to place her in her father's arms without dangerous emotion. The former point he compassed well, by taking advantage of the many ins and outs of the leisurely lanes of Beckley, so that he drew up at the back door of the Barton, without a single sapient villager being one bit the wiser. Now, if he only had his sister with him, the second point might have been better managed; because he would have sent her on in front, to treat with Mrs. Hookham, and employ all the feminine skill supplied by quickness, sympathy, and invention. As it was, he must do the best he could; and his greatest difficulty was with Grace herself. The young lady by this time was wide awake, and stirred with such violent throbbings of heart, at the view of divine and desirable Beckley sleeping in the moonlight, and at the breath of her own home-door, and haunt of her darling father's steps, that Cripps had to hold her down by her sacks, and wished that he could strap her so. "Do 'ee zit still, miss; do 'ee zit still," he kept on saying, till he was afraid of being rude. "You are a tyrant, Cripps; a perfect tyrant! Because you have picked me up, and been so good, have you any right to keep me from my father?" "Them rasonings," said Cripps in a decided tone, "is good; but comes to nothing. Either you do as I begs of you, missy, or I turns Dobbin's head, and back you go. It is for the Squire's sake I spake so harsh to 'ee. Supposin' you was to kill him, missy, what would you say arterwards?" "Oh, is he so dreadfully ill as that? I will do everything exactly as you tell me." "Then get down very softly, miss, and run and hide in that old doorway, quite out of the moonshine, and stay there till I come to fetch 'ee."