Soon there were seen horsemen, and carriages full of ladies, driving up towards Bilts’ Farm—Claverings and Woodburns, Heritages and Thorsbys, Degges and Fairfaxes. Coming and going they were, and all looking as if some good thing had happened to them all. “Who could have thought it,” said the villagers, “only two years ago?” Soon were seen George Woodburn and his tall, buxom, cheery-looking wife, walking soberly down towards the Grange, and all the heads of Woodburn Green put out to have a look after the handsome couple. And to see Letty Thorsby spring out of the porch of the Grange, and fly half down towards the garden-gate to meet her new sister, and such an embracing and kissing. And then, little Leonard Thorsby, with his flaxen locks, like a little burst of sunshine, scampering after his mother, and snatched up and kissed, and held out at arm’s-length, and admired, heavy as he was, by George! And then, Mr. and Mrs. Woodburn hurrying out, and then such hugging and kissing again, and all hurrying into the house, for George says, laughing, “Do just look! all the Green is out watching you!” So in they pop in a crowd. “Well!” say the villagers, “there never was a woman welcome to a house, if that one is not.” But in the midst of Elizabeth Woodburn’s joy, there was a dark spot from which she shrunk, as it ever and anon came into her mind. There was somewhere down below the Grange a dreadful place, called Wink’s Ferry, which she and everyone wished could be obliterated from the country. All that could be done, George Woodburn had done. He had had put up a board by the river, with the large words WOODBURN FERRY upon it; and all the people both there and at Rockville and at Cotmanhaye were requested never more to utter the hateful word Wink’s. It was to be buried in deepest oblivion, so that it should never fall like a sudden knell on the heart of his beloved bride. Yet mighty as is the power which says in the heart of woman, “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me,”—yet it was many a long day, yea, long year, before Elizabeth Woodburn could descend to the river-side below the Grange. There was a spot of horror there that made her whole nature shrink. There was a dark shadow which hung over that spot, which was a spectre lurking beneath the otherwise sunny pleasantness of her fate, which she would have given some years of her life to have banished. Her mother remained in Yorkshire, and would never come near the fatal neighbourhood.