But when night is added to such a situation, how much is its fearfulness increased! Imagine one or two unprotected women sitting by the fire of a lone house, on a winter’s evening, with a consciousness of the insecurity of their situation upon them. How instinct with danger becomes every thing, every movement, every sound!--the stirring of the trees--the whispering of the wind--the rustling of a leaf--the cry of a bird. They are not wishing to listen, but cannot help it; they are all sense; all eye and ear. A foot is heard without, and is lost again! A face is suddenly placed against a pane in the window! the latch of the door is slowly raised in their sight, or the click of one is heard where it is not seen. Imagine this, and you imagine what has thrilled through the heart, and frozen the blood of many a tenant of a solitary house. These are not the least of the causes that contribute to produce that timidity of disposition which, in an early part of the chapter, I have said to belong to many country people. My grandfather’s house was such a place. It stood in a solitary valley, with a great wood flanking the northern side. It had all sorts of legends and superstitions hanging about it. This field, and that lane, and one chamber or outbuilding or another, had a character that made them all hermetically sealed to a human foot after dark-hour, as it is there called. My grandmother was a bold woman in some respects, but these fears were perfectly triumphant over her; and she had, on one occasion, met with an incident which did not make her feel very comfortable alone in her house, in the day time. An Ajax of a woman once besieged her when left entirely by herself; who finding the doors secured against her, began smashing the windows with her fists, as with two sledge-hammers; and declared she would wash her hands in her heart’s blood. My grandfather too, had had a little adventure which just served to shew what courage he had, or rather had not. In that primitive time and place, if a tailor were wanted, he did not do his work at his own house, but came to that of his employer, and there worked, day after day, till the job was finished; that is, till all making and mending that could possibly be found about the house by a general examination of garments, was completed. He then adjourned to another house, and so went the round of the parish. I know not whether the tailors of those primitive times were as philosophical as Heinrich Johann Jung Stilling, and his fellows of Germany, who thus went from house to house, and both there with their employers, and on Sundays when they wandered into the woods, held the most interesting conversations on religion, philosophy, and literature: if this were the case, our country tailors have very much retrograded; and yet it would almost seem so, for my grandfather was passionately fond of Paradise Lost, and on a terribly snowy day had been reading it all day to the tailor, who had established