Helen and she standing at the dresser ate their last meal in the dingy kitchen of Russell House. It was nothing but sandwiches, but it was the most delicious food they had tasted there. It is a mistake if you are old to go back to the village in which you were born and bred. Ghosts meet you in every lane and look out from the windows. There are new names on the signboard of the inn and over the grocer’s shop. A steam-engine has been put in the mill, and the pathway behind to the mill dam and to the river bank has been closed. The people you see think you are a visitor. The church is restored, and there is a brand new Wesleyan chapel. Better stay where you are and amuse yourself by trying to make flowers grow in your little, smoky, suburban back-garden. But Miss Toller and Helen were not too old. Mr. Toller met them at the station with a four-wheeled chaise. Before the train had quite stopped, Helen caught sight of somebody standing by the cart which was brought for the luggage. ‘It’s Tom! it’s Tom!’ she screamed; and it was Tom himself, white-headed now and a little bent. She insisted on walking with him by the side of his horse the whole four miles to their journey’s end. He was between forty and fifty when she went away and had been with Mr. Toller ever since—‘tried a bit at times,’ he confessed, ‘with the second missus.’ ‘She’s with God, let us hope,’ said Tom, ‘and we’ll leave her alone.’ They came to Barton Sluice. Flat and unadorned are the fields there, and the Nen is slow, but it was their own land, they loved it, and they were at rest. They fell into their former habits, and the talk of crops, of markets, of the weather, and of their neighbours was sweet. Mrs. Mudge and Miss Everard came now and then to see them in summer time, and when Mr. Toller slept with his fathers, his daughter and Helen remained at the farm and managed it between them. ESTHER BLACKDEEP FEN, 24_th_ _November_ 1838.