sake, or folk will surely think you've been laughing at the lady and
gentleman. Well, here's at it again--Night t'ee, Michael.' And the
hostler went on with his sweeping.

'Night t'ee, hostler, I must move too,' said the milkman, shouldering his
yoke, and walking off; and there reached the inn in a gradual diminuendo,
as he receded up the street, shaking his head convulsively, 'More
know--Tom Fool--than Tom Fool--ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!'

The 'Red Lion,' as the inn or hotel was called which of late years had
become the fashion among tourists, because of the absence from its
precincts of all that was fashionable and new, stood near the middle of
the town, and formed a corner where in winter the winds whistled and
assembled their forces previous to plunging helter-skelter along the
streets. In summer it was a fresh and pleasant spot, convenient for such
quiet characters as sojourned there to study the geology and beautiful
natural features of the country round.

The lady whose appearance had asserted a difference between herself and
the Anglebury people, without too clearly showing what that difference
was, passed out of the town in a few moments and, following the highway
across meadows fed by the Froom, she crossed the railway and soon got
into a lonely heath. She had been watching the base of a cloud as it
closed down upon the line of a distant ridge, like an upper upon a lower
eyelid, shutting in the gaze of the evening sun. She was about to return
before dusk came on, when she heard a commotion in the air immediately
behind and above her head. The saunterer looked up and saw a wild-duck
flying along with the greatest violence, just in its rear being another
large bird, which a countryman would have pronounced to be one of the
biggest duck-hawks that he had ever beheld. The hawk neared its intended