’It is right it should be so. What ’ud you have been without me? Your mother died when you was a baby. Your father couldn’t be a nursing of you by night and day. It were I as did all that. I’d had a chance child,’—in a self-exculpatory tone, ’the lambs o’ the Lord must play;’ then louder: ’and I’d a lost it. I did everything for you, I were a proper mother to you, and so it be that I love you as my own child; and as the Lord has not seen fit to give me none of my own body, saving that chance child as died—and I reckon the stock of Hender be too crabbed and sour to be worth perpetuating—what have I to live for, and care for, and provide for, but you? And see this, Master John. King David said as the Lord rained snares out of heaven: snares be ropes with nooses at the end; and King David sez the Lord hangs these out of every cloud, whereby them as walks unawares may hang themselves. What be them hangman’s ropes dangling about, thick as rain-streaks, but all those things God has made, and with which he surrounds us, by which we may lift ourselves above the earth if we be prudent; but if we be fools, then we shall strangle ourselves therein. I reckon the new mistress be one of the Lord’s snares hanging down out of heaven. If you use a wife properly, and lay hold of her, and pull yourself up by her, then you will mount to heaven; but if you let her get round your throat, her’ll sure to throttle you. That be what makes me badwaddled’ (troubled) ’about you, now I see you wi’ such a rope before you. Keep your feet and hands a working up her, and don’t you never let her knot herself round you.’ Such was the house and such were the persons destined to receive Mirelle. John Herring loved Welltown; he had been born there and bred there. Every stone was dear to him. The dreary scenery was full of romance and beauty because associated with early memories. Old Genefer he loved; she had been his nurse, his guide, his friend. She was masterful, and exercised the authority of a mistress; but this had grown with years, and was at first endured, at last disregarded. It had become a part of Welltown, and was sacred accordingly. Herring was too full of content with his own home, of admiration for the barren coast scenery, to suppose that the same would not equally delight Mirelle. He would explain to Mirelle the good points in Genefer’s character, the greatness of the debt due to her, and for the sake of these she would overlook her faults. Alas! the place and the persons that were to receive Mirelle were the most uncongenial to her nature that could have been selected. But to return to the office on Willapark, and Genefer standing at the table before her foster child.