Mrs. Betty Schofield, the buxom hostess of the _Hanging Gate_ was no wise dismayed by the slackness of her custom. Rumour had it that Betty was a very warm woman. She had been some years a widow, and her husband had left her, as the gossips said, well worth picking up. Look at her as she sits in the long kitchen before a roaring fire of mingled coal, peat and logs. Below the medium height, with wavy brown hair, a soft brown eye, a dimpled chin, now inclined to the double, a full and swelling bust, a mouth not too small and smiling lips that parted only to display a perfect set of teeth--it does one good to look upon her rosy cheek.--Happy the man, you say, who shall own those ample charms and for whom shall beam the ready smile or soften the warm brown eyes. There are another two seated in the brick-tiled kitchen. Mary o' Stuart's commonly called Moll o' Stute's, and Mr. William Black. Moll shall have precedence in honour of her sex and calling, a noble calling, of a verity, for Mary was the midwife of the valley. She is scantily clad for the time of the year, yet you judge that it is not from cold that she huddles by the fireside, but rather for convenience of lighting the black clay pipe she so intently sucks, one long skinny brown arm resting on her knee, her eyes fixed upon the glowing fire that casts its flickering light upon the sharp hard-featured face. Her black hair is long and though streaked with grey is still abundant, and rebellious locks, escaped from the coil, stray over the scraggy shoulders, round which a shabby, faded, flannel shawl hangs loosely. No one knows where Moll lives, if it be not at the _Hanging Gate_, which, if not her home, is for Moll a sort of _Poste Restante_, and if not there to be always seen there she can always be heard of. Moll has less need of fixed abode than ordinary mortals. She has reached the age of fifty or more, and still bears her virgin name and owns to neither chick nor child, though there were that breathed mysterious hints of wild passages of thirty years gone bye, when Moll's cheek was soft and rosy and her form, though tall, lacked nought of grace and suppleness. "A saucy queen," the village grannies said, "and one that always thought herself too good for common folk; but pride had had its fall,"--a reflection that seemed to bring comfort to the toothless, hollow-cheeked beldames as they wheezed asthmatically of the scandals of a youth long fled, when Mary's foot light upon the village green and her laugh was readiest at feast or wakes.