(posts were not like th' posts now-a-days), and he found the burial
all over, and father talking o' flitting; for he couldn't abide the
cottage after mother was gone."

*"Come to me, Tyrrel, soon, AT AFTER supper."
--SHAKSPEARE, Richard III.

"Was it a pretty place?" asked Mary.

"Pretty, lass! I never seed such a bonny bit anywhere. You see
there are hills there as seem to go up into th' skies, not near
maybe, but that makes them all the bonnier. I used to think they
were the golden hills of heaven, about which mother sang when I was
a child--

"'Yon are the golden hills o' heaven,
Where ye sall never win.'

"Something about a ship and a lover that should hae been na lover,
the ballad was. Well, and near our cottage were rocks. Eh, lasses!
ye don't know what rocks are in Manchester! Grey pieces o' stone as
large as a house, all covered over wi' mosses of different colours,
some yellow, some brown; and the ground beneath them knee-deep in
purple heather, smelling sae sweet and fragrant, and the low music
of the humming-bee for ever sounding among it. Mother used to send
Sally and me out to gather ling and heather for besoms, and it was
such pleasant work! We used to come home of an evening loaded so as
you could not see us, for all that it was so light to carry. And
then mother would make us sit down under the old hawthorn tree
(where we used to make our house among the great roots as stood