"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 mean time 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