“A widow, I think you said, ma’am.” And the landlady called to the ostler to ask him if he knew anything of a Widow Johnson, who lived at Bleaburn. Will Ostler said there was a woman of that name who was the mother of Silly Jem. “Might that be she?” Mary had never heard of Silly Jem; but when she found that Widow Johnson had a daughter, some years married, that she had white hair, and strong black eyes, and a strong face altogether, and that she seldom spoke, she had little doubt that one so like certain of her relations was her aunt. The end of it was that Mary went to Bleaburn. She ordered the chaise herself, leaving it to the landlady to direct the post-boy where to set her down; she appealed to the woman’s good feelings to aid her if she should find that wine, linen or other comforts were necessary at Bleaburn, and she could not be allowed to come and buy them: explained that she was far from rich, and told the exact sum which she at present believed she should be justified in spending on behalf of the sick; and gave a reference to a commercial house in London. She did not tell—and indeed she gave only a momentary thought to it herself—that the sum of money she had mentioned was that which she had saved up to take her to Scotland, to see some friends of her family, and travel through the Highlands. As she was driven off from the gateway of the Cross Keys, nodding and smiling from the chaise window in turning the corner, the landlady ceased from commanding the post-boy on no account to go beyond the brow, and said to herself that this Miss Pickard was the most wilful young lady she had ever known, but that she could not help liking her, too. She did not seem to value her life any more than a pin; and yet she appeared altogether cheerful and sensible. If the good woman had been able to see into Mary’s heart, she would have discovered that she had the best reason in the world for valuing life very much indeed: but she had been so accustomed, all her life, to help everybody that needed it, that she naturally went straight forward into the business, without looking at difficulties or dangers, on the right hand or the left. Mary never, while she lived, forgot this drive. Her tone of mind was, no doubt, high, though she was unconscious of it. It was a splendid August evening, and she had never before seen moorland. In America, she had travelled among noble inland forests, and a hard granite region near the coasts of New England: but the wide-spreading brown and green moorland, with its pools of clear brown water glittering in the evening sunshine, and its black cocks popping out of the heather, and running into the hollows, was quite new to her. She looked down, two or three times, into a wooded dell where grey cottages were scattered among the coppices, and a little church tower rose above them; but the swelling ridges of the moor, with the tarns between, immediately attracted her eye again.