melodiously falls bubbling. The cattle drink out of this cistern.
The household bring their pitchers and fill them with drinking-water
by a dilatory, yet pretty, process. The water-carrier brings with
her a leaf of the hound's-tongue fern, and, inserting it in the
crevice of the gray rock, makes a cool, green spout for the sparkling
stream.

The house is no specimen, at the present day, of what it was in the
lifetime of Susan Dixon. Then, every small diamond pane in the
windows glittered with cleanliness. You might have eaten off the
floor; you could see yourself in the pewter plates and the polished
oaken awmry, or dresser, of the state kitchen into which you entered.
Few strangers penetrated further than this room. Once or twice,
wandering tourists, attracted by the lonely picturesqueness of the
situation, and the exquisite cleanliness of the house itself, made
their way into this house-place, and offered money enough (as they
thought) to tempt the hostess to receive them as lodgers. They would
give no trouble, they said; they would be out rambling or sketching
all day long; would be perfectly content with a share of the food
which she provided for herself; or would procure what they required
from the Waterhead Inn at Coniston. But no liberal sum--no fair
words--moved her from her stony manner, or her monotonous tone of
indifferent refusal. No persuasion could induce her to show any more
of the house than that first room; no appearance of fatigue procured
for the weary an invitation to sit down and rest; and if one more
bold and less delicate did so without being asked, Susan stood by,
cold and apparently deaf, or only replying by the briefest
monosyllables, till the unwelcome visitor had departed. Yet those
with whom she had dealings, in the way of selling her cattle or her
farm produce, spoke of her as keen after a bargain--a hard one to