"Where shall we go?" inquires he, as they stand at the farmyard gate. The callow Cochin chickens have grown up, and are stalking about, in all the dignity of long, yellow legs and adolescence, under the frames of the corn-ricks, "Where shall we go?--to see my mother?" "That would be returning her visit almost too promptly," answers the young girl, with a weary smile; "it is not more than half an hour since they left this house." "_They!_ Were my sisters here too, then?" inquires Bob, quickly; his confidence in his sisters' infallibility as to words and actions not being so perfect as in his mamma's. "I hope their coming did not worry you much." "Nothing worries me now," she answers, calmly; "I defy anything to worry, or anger, or frighten me. Do you remember a line of Mrs. Barrett Browning's? Oh no, by-the-bye, you never read poetry-- "'Fallen too low for special fear.' "That is exactly my case." "I never know the right sort of thing to say, don't you know," remarks Brandon, rather awkwardly, looking down, and poking about little pebbles with the end of his stick. "But I had hoped that mother might have hit upon something that would have comforted you a little." "She meant to, I am sure," replies Esther, gravely. "She was very kind, and so were the girls, I suppose; only some of Bessy's speeches rather reminded me of Eliphaz the Temanite's, 'Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off?'" "I wish to heaven that Bessy could be possessed with a dumb devil!" says that young lady's brother, looking up, red with sudden anger. "No one should ever have my leave to try and cast it out." "Let us go to the common," Esther says, abruptly, not heeding him. [1] A fact. CHAPTER XXIII. The common stretches, long and stony, at the top of the hill that backs Glan-yr-Afon. To reach it they have to climb through the waving woods, where the beeches and sycamores emulously cast down their crimson and amber leaves to strew the path before their feet. To reach it, they have to pass the woodman's stone cottage, his pigstye, and his little yap-yapping rude dog. From the common you may look upwards or downwards--northwards, to the valley-head; southwards, to the sea.