ABRAHAM shifted again. A cunning smile played about the hard lines
of his face. "POLLY," he said, bringing his closed fist down upon his
knee with a sudden violence, "you pick the richest, and let him carry
BONDUCA to the pa'son. Good looks wear badly, and good characters be
of no account; but the gold's the thing for us. Why," he continued,
meditatively, "the old house could be new thatched, and you and me
live like Lords and Ladies, away from the mulch o' the barton, all in
silks and satins, wi' golden crowns to our heads, and silver buckles
to our feet."

POLLY nodded eagerly. She was a Wessex woman born, and thoroughly
understood the pure and unsophisticated nature of the Wessex peasant.

CHAPTER III.

Meanwhile BONDUCA PEEP--little BO PEEP was the name by which the
country-folk all knew her--sat dreaming upon the hill-side, looking
out with a premature woman's eyes upon the rich valley that stretched
away to the horizon. The rest of the landscape was made up of
agricultural scenes and incidents which the slightest knowledge of
Wessex novels can fill in amply. There were rows of swedes, legions of
dairymen, maidens to milk the lowing cows that grazed soberly upon the
rich pasture, farmers speaking rough words of an uncouth dialect, and
gentlefolk careless of a milkmaid's honour. But nowhere, as far as
the eye could reach, was there a sign of the sheep that Bo had that
morning set forth to tend for her parents. Bo had a flexuous and
finely-drawn figure not unreminiscent of many a vanished knight
and dame, her remote progenitors, whose dust now mouldered in many
churchyards. There was about her an amplitude of curve which, joined
to a certain luxuriance of moulding, betrayed her sex even to a