It was so rare to hear my mother say a hard word against anybody (unless it were General Buonaparte) that I was across the room and at the window in a jump. A pony-chaise was coming slowly down the village street, and in it was the queerest-looking person that I had ever seen. She was very stout, with a face that was of so dark a red that it shaded away into purple over the nose and cheeks. She wore a great hat with a white curling ostrich feather, and from under its brim her two bold, black eyes stared out with a look of anger and defiance as if to tell the folk that she thought less of them than they could do of her. She had some sort of scarlet pelisse with white swans-down about her neck, and she held the reins slack in her hands, while the pony wandered from side to side of the road as the fancy took him. Each time the chaise swayed, her head with the great hat swayed also, so that sometimes we saw the crown of it and sometimes the brim. “What a dreadful sight!” cried my mother. “What is amiss with her, mother?” “Heaven forgive me if I misjudge her, Rodney, but I think that the unfortunate woman has been drinking.” “Why,” I cried, “she has pulled the chaise up at the smithy. I’ll find out all the news for you;” and, catching up my cap, away I scampered. Champion Harrison had been shoeing a horse at the forge door, and when I got into the street I could see him with the creature’s hoof still under his arm, and the rasp in his hand, kneeling down amid the white parings. The woman was beckoning him from the chaise, and he staring up at her with the queerest expression upon his face. Presently he threw down his rasp and went across to her, standing by the wheel and shaking his head as he talked to her. For my part, I slipped into the smithy, where Boy Jim was finishing the shoe, and I watched the neatness of his work and the deft way in which he turned up the caulkens. When he had done with it he carried it out, and there was the strange woman still talking with his uncle. “Is that he?” I heard her ask. Champion Harrison nodded. She looked at Jim, and I never saw such eyes in a human head, so large, and black, and wonderful. Boy as I was, I knew that, in spite of that bloated face, this woman had once been very beautiful. She put out a hand, with all the fingers going as if she were playing on the harpsichord, and she touched Jim on the shoulder. “I hope—I hope you’re well,” she stammered. “Very well, ma’am,” said Jim, staring from her to his uncle. “And happy too?” “Yes, ma’am, I thank you.” “Nothing that you crave for?” “Why, no, ma’am, I have all that I lack.” “That will do, Jim,” said his uncle, in a stern voice. “Blow up the forge again, for that shoe wants reheating.”