The stranger turned on her a malignant smile.
“There is a young lord in love with her,” the stranger says, “and I’m that lord. Have her at your house tomorrow night at eight o’clock, and you must stick cross pins through the candle, as you have done for many a one before, to bring her lover thither by ten, and her fortune’s made. And take this for your trouble.”
He extended his long finger and thumb toward her, with a guinea temptingly displayed.
“I have nowt to do wi’ thee. I nivver sid thee afoore. Git thee awa’! I earned nea goold o’ thee, and I’ll tak’ nane. Awa’ wi’ thee, or I’ll find ane that will mak’ thee!”
The old woman had stopped, and was quivering in every limb as she thus spoke.
He looked very angry. Sulkily he turned away at her words, and strode slowly toward the wood from which he had come; and as he approached it, he seemed to her to grow taller and taller, and stalked into it as high as a tree.
“I conceited there would come something o’t,” she said to herself. “Farmer Lew must git it done nesht Sunda’. The a’ad awpy!”
Old Farmer Lew was one of that sect who insist that baptism shall be but once administered, and not until the Christian candidate had attained to adult years. The girl had indeed for some time been of an age not only, according to this theory, to be baptised, but if need be to be married.
Her story was a sad little romance. A lady some seventeen years before had come down and paid Farmer Lew for two rooms in his house. She told him that her husband would follow her in a fortnight, and that he was in the meantime delayed by business in Liverpool.
In ten days after her arrival her baby was born, Mall Carke acting as sage femme on the occasion; and on the evening of that day the poor young mother died. No husband came; no wedding-ring, they said, was on her finger. About fifty pounds was found in her desk, which Farmer Lew, who was a kind old fellow and had lost his two children, put in bank for the little girl, and resolved to keep her until a rightful owner should step forward to claim her.
They found half-a-dozen love-letters signed “Francis,” and calling the dead woman “Laura.”
So Farmer Lew called the little girl Laura; and her sobriquet of “Silver Bell” was derived from a tiny silver bell, once gilt, which was found among her poor mother’s little treasures after her death, and which the child wore on a ribbon round her neck.
Thus, being very pretty and merry, she grew up as a North-country farmer’s daughter; and the old man, as she needed more looking after, grew older and less able to take care of her; so she was, in fact, very nearly her own mistress, and did pretty much in all things as she liked.
Old Mall Carke, by some caprice for which no one could account, cherished an affection for the girl, who saw her often, and paid her many a small fee in exchange for the secret indications of the future.
It was too late when Mother Carke reached her home to look for a visit from Laura Silver Bell that day.
About three o’clock next afternoon, Mother Carke was sitting knitting, with her glasses on, outside her door on the stone bench, when she saw the pretty girl mount lightly to the top of the stile at her left under the birch, against the silver stem of which she leaned her slender hand, and called,
“Mall, Mall! Mother Carke, are ye alane all by yersel’?”
“Ay, Laura lass, we can be clooas enoo, if ye want a word wi’ me,” says the old woman, rising, with a mysterious nod, and beckoning her stiffly with her long fingers.
The girl was, assuredly, pretty enough for a “lord” to fall in love with. Only look at her. A profusion of brown rippling hair, parted low in the middle of her forehead, almost touched her eyebrows, and made the pretty oval of her face, by the breadth of that rich line, more marked. What a pretty little nose! what scarlet lips, and large, dark, long-fringed eyes!
Her face is transparently tinged with those clear Murillo tints which appear in deeper dyes on her wrists and the backs of her hands. These are the beautiful gipsy-tints with which the sun dyes young skins so richly.
The old woman eyes all this, and her pretty figure, so round and slender, and her shapely little feet, cased in the thick shoes that can’t hide their comely proportions, as she stands on the top of the stile. But it is with a dark and saturnine aspect.
“Come, lass, what stand ye for atoppa t’ wall, whar folk may chance to see thee? I hev a thing to tell thee, lass.”
She beckoned her again.
“An’ I hev a thing to tell thee, Mall.”
“Come hidder,” said the old woman peremptorily.
“But ye munna gie me the creepin’s” (make me tremble). “I winna look again into the glass o’ water, mind ye.”
The old woman smiled grimly, and changed her tone.
“Now, hunny, git tha down, and let ma see thy canny feyace,” and she beckoned her again.
Laura Silver Bell did get down, and stepped lightly toward the door of the old woman’s dwelling.
“Tak this,” said the girl, unfolding a piece of bacon from her apron, “and I hev a silver sixpence to gie thee, when I’m gaen away heyam.”
They entered the dark kitchen of the cottage, and the old woman stood by the door, lest their conference should be lighted on by surprise.
“Afoore ye begin,” said Mother Carke (I soften her patois), “I mun tell ye there’s ill folk watchin’ ye. What’s auld Farmer Lew about, he doesna get t’ sir” (the clergyman) “to baptise thee? If he lets Sunda’ next pass, I’m afeared ye’ll never be sprinkled nor signed wi’ cross, while there’s
