Perhaps the chief reason of the loyalty, as well as the quietness of Bleaburn, was its lying in a cleft of the hills; in a fissure so deep and narrow, that a traveller in a chaise might easily pass near it without perceiving that there was any settlement at all, unless it was in the morning when the people were lighting their fires, or on the night of such a day as that on which our story opens. In the one case, the smoke issuing from the cleft might hint of habitations: in the other, the noise and ruddy light would leave no doubt of there being somebody there. There was, at last, a victory in Spain. The news of the battle of Albuera had arrived; and it spread abroad over the kingdom, lighting up bonfires in the streets, and millions of candles in windows, before people had time to learn at what cost this victory was obtained, and how very nearly it had been a fatal defeat, or anything about it, in short. If they had known the fact that while our allies, the Spaniards, Portuguese, and Germans, suffered but moderately, the British were slaughtered as horribly as they could have been under defeat: so that, out of six thousand men who went up the hill, only fifteen hundred were left standing at the top, the people might have let their bonfires burn out as soon as they would, and might have put out their candles that mourners might weep in darkness. But they burst into rejoicing first, and learned details afterwards. Every boy in Bleaburn forgot the rabbits that day. All were busy getting in wood for the bonfire. Not a swinging shutter, not a loose pale, not a bit of plank, or ricketty gate, or shaking footbridge escaped their clutches. Where they hid their stock during the day, nobody knew; but there was a mighty pile at dusk. It was then that poor Widow Slaney, stealing out to close her shutter, because she could not bear the sound of rejoicing, nor the sight of her neighbours abroad in the ruddy light, found that her shutter was gone. All day, she had been in the loft, lest she should see anybody; for the clergyman had been to tell her that her son Harry had been shot as a deserter. She had refused to believe it at first; but Mr. Finch had explained to her that the soldiers in Spain had suffered so cruelly from hunger, and want of shoes and of every comfort, that hundreds of them had gone into the towns to avoid starvation; and then, when the towns were taken by the allies, such British soldiers as were found, and were declared to have no business there, were treated as deserters, for an example. It was some comfort that Mr. Finch did not think that Harry had done any thing very wicked; but Mrs. Slaney could not meet any one, nor bear the flaring light on her ceiling; so she went up to the loft again, and cried all night in the dark. Farmer Neale was the wonder of the place this evening. He was more gracious than anybody, though there was nobody who was not, at all times, afraid of him. When