"It's all up wi' thee, Abe lad, aw'm feart. It's noan i' reason 'at a lass 'ud gi' up a looikin' glass like yon just to wed a chap like thee. Aw'll say nowt abaat th' feather bed; oo med happen be got to swop it for a mattress stuffed wi' straw, or belike shavin's, which is th best Mickle Mill 'll run to this mony a day to come, for aw'n noticed women set varry little store on makkin' theirsen snug an' comfortable wheer men come. But that glass 'll cook thi bacon, Abe. Why, tha's nobbut to watch a woman wi' a bit o' a glass noa bigger nor th' palm o' mi hand. Oo'll twitch hersen, an' twist hersen, aye, awmost stan' on her yead, but some road or other oo'll see th' back o' her yead an' all ovver her, pertickler if oo's getten a new bow or bonnet or strings to look at. Aw once seed a peacock i front o' just sich another glass, an' they towd me 'at when they tuk th' glass away that bird fell off i' its eatin' and just pined away. An' th' rum part o' th' business is it isn't their own bonny faces they want to look at, it's their clo'es. Yo' may be sewer 'at if Eve had onny clo'es to speik on i' th' Garden o' Eden it isn't a apple nor owt else to eit or sup other 'at Owd Harry 'ud ha' tempted her wi', but a looikin' glass. But bein' as oo were, poor thing, oo'd nowt but her own pratty face to speer at, an' though that's what a man vallys most i' a woman, it's just what she hersen sets least count on." "It seems to me, James Haigh," said my sister in a very frosty tone, "that you've made a very minute study of women, and you'd best take yourself off to those you've learned such a character from." "Nay, nay," protested Jim, hastily, "it's nobbut what aw'n heard say. Aw know nowt." "The letter, the letter," broke in my father, and Ruth looking but half convinced, resumed the reading. "Meet her at the Church Inn!" cried my sister. "Aye, that I will, and I just wish it was to-morrow. Now mind you lads are at home and all washed and in your second best when we get to 'Wrigley Mill." CHAPTER XII. MISSING! THE weather at the end of March of that year was less wintry than we often see in that blusterous month which, having come in like a lion, seemed about to go out like a lamb. The sun gained in power daily, the snow had melted on the hillsides, though under the long black stone fences and in the dells and crevices deep drifts still lingered. The grass was beginning to green, the sky was of a pale azure, flecked by slender wisps of white, like doves sailing far aloft, the birds had begun to twitter in the hedges and pipe and trill in the strewish air, and in man and maid the young blood coursed warm and glad and strong.