hands before her." And a little farther away sat the cowherd.

He had a sleeping-room above the barn, and took his meals in the house.
By Miss Betty's desire he always went in to family prayers after supper,
when he sat as close as possible to the door, under an uncomfortable
consciousness that Thomasina did not think his boots clean enough for
the occasion and would find something to pick off the carpet as she
followed him out, however hardly he might have used the door-scraper
beforehand.

It might be a difficult matter to decide which he liked best, beer or
John Broom. But next to these he liked Thomasina's stories.

Thomasina was kind to him. With all his failings and the dirt on his
boots, she liked him better than the farm-bailiff. The farm-bailiff was
thrifty, and sensible and faithful, and Thomasina was faithful and
sensible and thrifty, and they each had a tendency to claim the monopoly
of those virtues. Notable people complain, very properly, of thriftless
and untidy ones, but they sometimes agree better with them than with
rival notabilities. And so Thomasina's broad face beamed benevolently as
she bid the cowherd "draw up" to the fire, and he who (like Thomasina)
was a native of the country, would confirm the marvels she related, with
a proper pride in the wonderful district to which they both belonged.

He would help her out sometimes with names and dates in a local
biography. By his own account he knew the man who was murdered at the
inn in the Black Valley so intimately that it turned Annie the lass as
white as a dish-cloth to sit beside him. If Thomasina said that folk
were yet alive who had seen the little green men dance in Dawborough
Croft the cowherd would smack his knees and cry, "Scores on 'em!" And