When scrubbing the tile-floor, or mending the linen, or chopping wood (for girls as well as boys passed most of their time at this work), Amy's thoughts were full of fancies suggested by her father's winter tales. She was imagining the grand times come again—her father living in a turreted castle ten times as large as Sir Marmaduke's dwelling, and her brothers—Silas, Ned, and Joe—each mounted on a prancing white horse with trappings of gold; and her dear mother dressed out in satin and gems, giving out loaves every Sunday to hundreds and hundreds of the poor. These were but foolish fancies, and Amy would have been ashamed to have told them to any one but little May, her youngest sister, who would open wide her blue eyes and think how delightful it would be to ride in a carriage, and eat roast meat every day in the week! Amy's foolish day-dreams only lasted till the time when, at a lady's request to her parents, she attended a village school, which was nearly two miles from her home. Then every day the little pale girl, with her bag on her arm, might be seen crossing the common. Amy was the quickest and most willing of scholars, her lessons were always well learned, she was ever ready with her answers, and the teacher regarded as her best pupil, the thin, stunted, sickly child, who seemed to take in the meaning of everything with her eyes. These were very happy times for poor Amy, though the walk to and from the school was almost too much for her strength, and wearily she dragged her limbs along before she reached her father's cottage. Amy was ill-clad and ill-fed, her frame had never been hardy; with her nothing seemed to grow but her mind. At the age of twelve, which was hers when my story opens, Amy was little taller, and scarcely as heavy, as her sister May, who was but half that age. Amy's happy school-days had not lasted for long. After the sudden death of her mother, the eldest girl of Mytton could no longer be spared from home. She must, young and fragile as she was, do the cleaning and cooking, the washing and mending, and help with the chopping besides. Amy never complained, and seldom cried except at night when every one else was sleeping, but she felt her mother's loss keenly. She felt also her own weak health, for her strength was ebbing away day by day. Still the poor child went on with her labour as long as her small thin fingers could work; till one day she almost fainted in the shed, and never more was the chopper to be lifted by Amy Mytton. She did what she could in the cottage, but that little grew less and less; a terrible cough racked her frame; her head drooped as if its weight were too much for her strength to support, her appetite totally failed her, and Amy could never keep herself warm. Mytton did not appear to see the change in his daughter, or, if he did, it aroused his impatience, not his tenderness; indeed there was little of tenderness in the nature of Silas Mytton.