were called upon to speak, and respectful ones from the guilty, when the necessity came upon them of making out a case. All the complaisance that there was, however, was engrossed by the Mr. Fergussons. The constables got only sneers and short answers, and men and women looked suspiciously on one another all through the district, none knowing what a neighbour might have the power to tell. Perhaps so many cross words were never spoken in one day in the vale, as the day after the burning of Halsted’s mill. “What do you look at me for? You had better look to yourself,” was the common sentiment at the forge, in the field, and on the alehouse bench. As for the children, they were so perplexed with instructions what they were to say, that it was only to be hoped no one would ask them any questions. It was not to be supposed that Mrs. Skipper could stay quietly at home while strangers were passing up and down the street about whom her journeyman could give her no information, and while reports were travelling round of one neighbour and another being compromised. She burst in at Kay’s, just after he was gone to his work, when his wife was preparing to put away breakfast, and Mary was beating out the corn which she had gleaned the evening before, and which was destined to the mill this day. “I have not brought you a hot roll this morning, Mrs. Kay; no, nor so much as a crust. I cannot afford any more of that at present; and so you will not look for it from me.” “What do you speak in that way to me for? I don’t know what you mean,” said Mrs. Kay, with an angry, puzzled stare. “Nor I what you would be at, I’m sure,” replied Mrs. Skipper. “One would not believe you were the soft-spoken Mrs. Kay, now-a-days. You can be sharper in your speech than ever I am, let me tell you.” “That is the more reason why you should be soft in yours,” said Mary. “She has borne with you sometimes, when you have been better in health than she is now.” “Well; that is true: and she does look so poorly.... Ah! now, there’s master John coming out with a speech about my fresh colour again.” John was not thinking about anybody’s colour. He wanted to know whether it was not true that he had had eleven-pence change from her the night before. “To be sure you had, after taking a penny roll.” John called his mother to witness, that she might tell his father, that he was in possession of a shilling before the troubles began at Kirkland’s; to say nothing of those farther on. His father had doubted his getting that shilling honestly, and had desired his mother to take possession of the eleven pence till the whole was unquestionably accounted for; and now John wanted his money back again. Mrs. Kay did not, however, heed his request; and the matter ended in Mary’s persuading the boy that if he had the money by the time he was at liberty to go out, it would do very well, instead of pressing for it now that his mother was busy thinking of something else.