"Only be too glad, Jack," said Oldstone. "Out with it; there is nothing like a good story to beguile the time in weather like this." Our host, thus encouraged, drew his chair close to the fire, and his example was immediately followed by his guests. Then, refilling his yard of clay and lighting it in the fire, he gave one or two preliminary whiffs, and commenced his story thus:-- Well, gentlemen, when I was a youngster, that is to say, a lad of nineteen, I fell deeply in love with my Molly, who, though I say it, was the finest lass in the village and for miles round it. For all the world like my Helen, at her age, bless her dear heart! She was the daughter of a rich miller--his only child. Well, it had been a long attachment, for Molly and I were play-mates when we was little, but when I grew to be about nineteen, and my father began to see that I was head over ears in love with Molly, he forbade me to see any more of her, because he and old Sykes--leastways, Molly's father, the miller--wasn't friends, d'ye see. Nevertheless, Molly and I used to get a peep at each other on the sly like, and often took long walks together when no one was near. Well, old Sykes also objected to me keeping company with his daughter, and sometimes suspecting what was up, used to lie in wait for us, and catch us in the lane as we was coming home from our walk. Then he'd give us both a "blowing up," for old Sykes wasn't partickler nice in his language, and Molly was locked up in her room while he went to complain of me to my father. This sort of thing occurred more than once, and Sykes, not knowing how to put a stop to it in any other way, sent his daughter on a visit to an aunt of hers some distance off. I didn't know nothing of this for some time, and still went hovering round the house, expecting to see Molly at the window. Now, there happened to be at that time an epidemic running through the village, as proved fatal to many, carrying off both the young and the old, and when my father saw how pulled down I was in health and spirits, which was all along of my not having seen Molly for many a week, he took it into his head that I had caught the epidemic, and sent for a doctor. The doctor came, felt my pulse, and looked at my tongue, and pronounced me very bad, but said that he did not see the usual signs of the epidemic. He ordered me, however, to be put to bed, and prescribed me some physic. Instead of doing me any good, it only made me worse, for the doctor was ignorant of the true cause of my low spirits. I was forced to keep in bed, and could do nothing night or day but think of Molly. My father, seeing me rapidly grow worse, but still ignorant of the cause--though he knew that I had been very much cut up about Molly--began to take on so--I being his only son--that the doctor was afraid that he would have to take to his bed. Once, shortly after Molly's disappearance, he told me that she had caught the epidemic and had died.