He kept the conversation on the mill or on subjects relating to Harry's proposed journey until there was a sudden silence which for a moment or two no one appeared able to break.

It was Mrs.Hatton who did so, and with a woman's instinct she plunged at once into a subject too sacred to dispute.
"My dear Harry," she said, in her clear vibrant voice, "my dear lad, John and I have just been talking of Wesley and how he came to light our hearthstone.

You see, poor Squire Yates' fire went out last night." "Never! Surely never, mother!" "It did, my dear.

Yates has no son, he is old and forgetful, and his nephew, who is only a Ramsby, was at Thornton market race, and nobody thought of the fire, and so out it went.

They do say the squire is dying today.