"Well," said Ephraim, "let's see if she'll tak' a rabbit. I don't suppose she will. Come to look at her, she's nobbut a poorish sort. Not much breed about that cur, aw' rekkon. Aw'm fain yo' didn't ha' th' ferret after all"--a remark that proved Ephraim was a philosopher of sorts, and knew how to console himself in affliction. But Tear'em had promptly falsified this last adverse judgment on her merits. Ephraim found a long drain that ran the length of a neighbouring field. The ferret went in at one end, whilst I nursed Tear'em at the other. Presently a rabbit bolted, and Tear'em tossed it in the air before it had run ten yards in the open. And so began my friendship with Ephraim Sykes. Lord! what times we had on those dear old moors. It was Ephraim taught me to swim in Clough House mill dam; it was Ephraim who made me horrid sick with my first pipe; Ephraim who knew every bird nest on ground, in hedge, or wall, or tree; Ephraim who haunted old laithes and mistals with his ferret and my Tear'em; Ephraim who skinned the rats and dried and cured their skins and made me a cap thereout; Ephraim who knew where the biggest trout lurked under the sides of the brooks that babbled down the hillsides into the river Colne; Ephraim, I blush to say, who knew the ways of the nesting grouse and took their young before they left the nest. He couldn't read and he couldn't write, and thought those accomplishments fit only for lawyers, doctors, and parsons. But of mother wit he'd enough to stock a parish. When I was not at my lessons we were inseparable though I could never get him to cross my father's threshold, and to all my hints that I should visit him at Burnplatts he turned a deaf ear. And the years passed, and we grew older, and went our several ways--he frequenting horse fairs and feasts, and wakes, and thumps and I minding my warp at the tail of a loom. But Fate had much in store for Ephraim and me in common and what it was the patient reader will learn anon. * * * Now on the very Saturday after our junketing at the Wakes I announced to Mary my pious intent to visit my father at Pole Moor, and to call in upon Mr. Turner on my way. Jim, who heard me, eyed me narrowly, and then knowingly winked the dexter eye. "How far's th' Burnplatts fro' Pole Moor?" was all he said, but said in such a tone as to make his mother glance questioningly from him to me. "Shall aw go wi' thee, Abel?" "You can if you like," I said curtly, and wishing that that confounded, tell-tale colour would desert my cheeks. "Well, aw calc'late not this bout, though mich obliged to yo' for your hearty invitation. Aw nivver was so mich pressed i' my life. But, as yo' sen, there's occasions when two's company and three's none." Now I had said no such thing. "I tell you I'm going to see Mr. Turner on my way, and I'm not sure that he'd care to be moithered with company," I explained, somewhat lamely, I fear.