stony track, down which a streamlet trickled from the peat bog above.
The house had stood in the same place for two hundred years, and Jos
Hughes looked as if he too had lived there for the same length of time.
His quaintly cut blue cloth coat adorned with large brass buttons, his
knee breeches of corduroy, and grey blue stockings, looking well in
keeping with his dwelling, but very out of place behind a counter. His
brown wrinkled face and ruddy cheeks were like a shrivelled apple, his
shrewd inquisitive eyes peered out through a pair of large brass-rimmed
spectacles, and, to judge by his expression, the view they got of the
world in general was not satisfactory.

It was a day of brilliant sunshine and intense heat, but through the
open shop door the sea wind came in with refreshing coolness. Behind
the counter Jos Hughes measured and weighed lazily, throwing in with
his short weight a compliment, or a screw of peppermints, as the case
required.

"Who is this coming up in the dust?" he mumbled.

"'Tis Morva of the moor," said a woman standing in the doorway and
shading her eyes with her hand. "What does she want, I wonder?
There's a merry lass she is!"

"Oh! day or night, sun or snow don't matter to her," said Jos Hughes.

At this moment the subject of their remarks entered the shop, and,
sitting on a sack of maize, let her arms fall on her lap. She was
quickly followed by a large black sheep dog, who bounded in and,
placing his fore-paws on the counter, with tongue hanging out, looked
at Jos Hughes intently.