yellow cock all stiff and cold with a kind of white froth round his mouth. And after that, her war all of a tremble, war Sal. Her began to hear voices, and to see things as folks shouldn't see, and to hear bits of noises everywhere. And a kind of sweat seemed to ooze out from her hands and feet, and her felt cold and hot all to a time, and the doctor's physic did her no good, nor could any of Mrs. Benson's draughts ease her. And they sent her off to the sea to stay with a sister at Rhyl; but Sal her came back queerer than ever, and her wouldn't speak, but would sit gaping and blinking as if her couldn't mak' nothin' out, nor understood nought. And all the while Becky would prance about aunty-pranty, and speer over the hedge, and laugh and jabber and talk a heathen tongue." "What is that?" I asked. "_Why, their own tongue._" "What is it like?" "Oh, never you ask, marm," replied Burbidge sternly. "No pure-minded woman ever spoke that tongue, but witches they take to it like widdies" (ducklings) "to a horse pond. And for all Ben had cried 'Fudge,' and 'You don't catch an old fox nappin',' as he did at the first when Sal were overtaken, he got mighty fidgety and couldn't stop still. He took to dropping his pipe, wud begin a story and then wud break off and laugh afore the joke was come, and his speech got queer like Sal's, and at last he could bear it no longer, and he went off to Becky. And he took a golden guinea that he had had off the first Mrs. Benson, her as they called madam, for folks said that she war a parson's daughter, and that she had given him for pulling her lad out of a brook over seventy years agone, and that he valued like the apple of his eye, and he pulled out the guinea from his waistcoat pocket and he said 'This be yourn,' to Becky, 'if for the love of God you'll take the curse off me and mine.' But her wudn't, wudn't Becky, and her only laughed and laughed, same as an ecall in the Edge wood. And then Ben ran out frightened, so that his legs seemed to give under him, same as a hop shoot that has no stake, and he came home jabbering, crying, and laughing like a frightened child, and nobody could do nought with him. [Sidenote: BURBIDGE SEEKS HIS BROTHER] "Farmer Benson, he tried to do what he could as _maister_; but Benjamin had lost all respect, and laughed at him same as if he had been his gossip. Nor could any of his childers bring him to reason, neither Frank nor Moses, his grown sons who live at Wolverhampton, and have families of their own. So at last Mrs. Benson, her has a-wrote to me, to come and try what I can do. And seeing that Ben and I we be true brothers, and he so down in his luck, I thought as I'd like to go and see him, and look in at a Craven Arms bit of a show of a few spring things, and so get a holiday and a sight of poor Ben at the same time, if so be I can be free to-day."