As for my companion she wrapped herself in reserve, replying in monosyllables to my clumsy efforts to draw her into conversation. I gleaned, however, that her name was Miriam, and that she lived at Burnplatts with her grandmother. They had come to the Wakes to sell those little penny whisks of heather which housewives use for dusting, and I don't think I was far wrong in guessing that the old lady had hoped to turn a copper or two by telling the fortunes of those swains and maids who were willing to cross her palm with the accustomed coin. But of this Miriam said nought. We conveyed the twain through the cutting on the top of Stanedge, set them with their faces towards Pole Moor, and so took our leave. But, though I had met with little encouragement, I vowed within my heart that by hook or crook I would hold Miriam's little brown hand in mine again. CHAPTER II. THE BURNPLATTERS. ON the slope of the hill as it shelves down to the Colne from Pole Moor lies the little cluster of houses called Burn Platts, and there dwelt, if so nomadic a people could be properly said to dwell anywhere, those terrors of the countryside, the bogeys of all the children for miles around, the Burnplatters--horse-dealers, gipsies, fortune-tellers cloth-lifters, roost-spoilers poachers, tramps, thieves, whiskey-spinners, and evil-doers generally. I could not remember a time when I had not lived in awe of the Burnplatters. The direst threat my mother knew, when my little sister Ruth and I were more than ordinarily perverse, was to send us to the Burnplatters.