There were inscriptions under the bells that had summoned servants long ago, which told of busy times and a full house. The lettering only differed from anything in the present day by being subtly and unobtrusively old-fashioned. "MR. GERALD" and "MR. THOMAS" had given up ringing bells for many a long day, and if the one suspended above MISS SARAH'S name sometimes tinkled through the stillness, it was only because Barbara wanted some hot water. Miss Sarah was one of the most distinct of the girl's phantoms. Rightly or wrongly, Barbara always believed her to be the beautiful Miss Rothwell of whom an old man in the village told her a tradition, told to him in his boyhood. It seemed that a Rothwell of some uncertain date stood for the county ("and pretty nigh ruined himself," said her informant, with a grim, yet admiring, enjoyment of the extravagant folly of the contest), and in the very heat of the election Miss Rothwell drove with four horses to the polling-place, to show herself clothed from head to foot in a startling splendour of yellow, her father's colour. "They said she was a rare sight to see," the old man concluded meditatively. "And did Mr. Rothwell get in?" asked Barbara. "No, no!" he said, shaking his head. "No Rothwell ever got in for the county, though they tried times. But he pretty nigh ruined himself." Had she cared to ask her uncle, Barbara might very possibly have ascertained the precise date of the election, and identified the darkly beautiful girl who was whirled by her four spirited horses into the roaring, decorated town. But she was not inclined to talk of her fancies to Mr. Hayes. So, assuming the heroine to be Miss Sarah, she remained in utter ignorance concerning her after life. Did she ever wear the white robes of a bride, or the blackness of widow's weeds? Barbara often wondered. But at night, in her room, which was Sarah Rothwell's, she could never picture her otherwise than superbly defiant in the meteor-like glory of that one day. As she brushed her dusky cloud of hair that evening she called up the splendour of her favourite vision, and then her thoughts fell sadly away from it to Reynold Harding, the man who had kindred blood in his veins, but no inheritance of name or land. Those iron horse-hoofs, long ago, had thundered over the bit of road where Barbara gathered her autumn nosegay, and where young Harding--oh, poor fellow!--slipped in the mire, and scrambled awkwardly to his feet, a pitiful, sullen figure to put beside the beautiful Miss Rothwell.