“Midden Harbour! Miss Blyth. Why that’s a rum spot to come into.” “Why, you see; Squire Fuller couldn’t touch us there.” [O Lucy, you inveterate plotter! you designing woman!] “And you see, Mr. Morris, if your neighbours are a bad lot, it’s time somebody was trying to do them good. But,” said she, heaving a sigh which was intended to search the innermost recesses of his heart, “there’s nobody there that has room enough to take us in.” Piggy Morris smiled grimly, as he said, “Try Dick Spink, the besom-maker.” “Oh, don’t mention that wicked man. We must have a more respectable place than that, or we can’t come at all, _and Squire Fuller will get his way_.” “Nay, I’ll be hanged if he shall. You shall have my house first, though we have no room to spare.” Piggy Morris stood still a moment. Lucy’s heart beat with hope. Then Morris exclaimed,-- “Lucy Blyth! For your sake, you shall have my old malt house. I can do without it, and the Methody parson shall come into Midden Harbour!” “Oh, Mr. Morris! God bless you for saying that. Now I shall be able to come and _see you every week_.” That clinched the nail, and as Adam Olliver said at the quarterly meeting, “God was strangger than the devil,” and Midden Harbour couldn’t “keep oot the hosts o’ God’s elect.” “Come in and tell my father,” said Lucy, as they reached the garden gate, “you’ll be the most welcome guest he’s seen for many a day.” “Good evening, Morris,” said Natty Blyth, who had come to the door; “Come in a bit!” “I can’t stop, thank ye,” blurted out Piggy Morris. “They tell me you want to hold your meetings in Midden Harbour. You can have my malt-kiln and welcome, and you may tell the Methody parson that he may thank Lucy Blyth for that. Good night.” CHAPTER XXIII. THE DARK DEED IN THURSTON WOOD. “Oh, how will crime engender crime! Throw guilt Upon the soul, and, like a stone cast on The troubled waters of a lake, ’Twill form in circles, round succeeding round, Each wider than the first.” _Colman._ A cold December wind was blowing to and fro the dead brown leaves in Thurston Wood, a large tract of plantation that bounded the northern and higher side of Squire Fuller’s park. Gaunt and grim loomed the naked trees through the foggy air, and the long grass was wet and dank with the perpetual drip of the moisture-laden boughs. The brief dark day was rapidly deepening into night, but a darker deed was about to be perpetrated in that lonely and sombre place.