And further, there was Nicholas Lovel’s younger brother Olver, by the kind-hearted given occasional employment on odd jobs of carpentering, house-painting, and the like, for he was skilful enough as a workman, and could be trusted to carry out his directions with the fidelity of that kind of brain commonly known as “simple.” He might have passed as a good-looking youth, with tight, chestnut curls and eyes of a curiously pale blue, rimmed with black round the iris, but for the oblique and cunning expression that was apt to cross his face like a cloud drifting across the moon, and the slight hint of deformity that clung about him,--a deformity so indefinite, that it was impossible to say precisely where it lay, whether in his neck being slightly sunk into his shoulders, or in his head being slightly too large for his body, or in his hands being slightly too well-formed, too sensitive for the hands of a workman, or in his tread being slightly too catlike for one of his build and bulk. He had in the village the reputation of slyness, a sudden shrewdness, that was disquieting and therefore repulsive in one whom mere simplicity would have entitled to the charity of all men. From this reputation of cunning the legend had grown in the village, as such things grow always in that fertile virgin soil of ignorance, the legend had grown into a variety of sinister shapes, all ornamented with copious and more or less picturesque detail: Olver Lovel’s grandmother had been burned for a witch; his mother, who was kept in such seclusion now by the severity of Nicholas, was a witch also; Olver himself practised wizardry; he went out of his mind when the moon was full; he was mortally feared by all animals,--this indeed was true, and a matter of common knowledge;--he controlled his evil impulses only through fear of his brother, but if his brother were to be taken away, then God help them all! These were only a few of the things that were openly uttered about Olver Lovel. Nicholas himself was not above suspicion. He had the same eyes as his brother, of the palest blue with those curious black rims, and the effect in his dark face, with his black hair, was certainly very strange. But people did not fear Nicholas as they feared Olver. Nicholas was a straight-forward man, reserved and uncompromising because his pride had so much to suffer, and no doubt his endurance too, living as he did between his two unusual relations; they had, on the whole, a good deal of sympathy and respect for Nicholas. It was no life, they said, for a young man. But who could help him? He would let no one near him, either literally or figuratively; pride was the hardest defence to deal with. A harsh young man; but he had much to put up with. And if he was harsh towards himself and forbidding towards other men, let them at least do him the justice to say that towards dumb beasts he had the gentleness of a woman for a child; ay, and the