any other girl to marry him.'

"It is Miss Swaffer who has all the credit of the munificence: but in
a very few days it came out that Mr. Swaffer had presented Yanko with
a cottage (the cottage you've seen this morning) and something like an
acre of ground--had made it over to him in absolute property. Willcox
expedited the deed, and I remember him telling me he had a great
pleasure in making it ready. It recited: 'In consideration of saving the
life of my beloved grandchild, Bertha Willcox.'

"Of course, after that no power on earth could prevent them from getting
married.

"Her infatuation endured. People saw her going out to meet him in the
evening. She stared with unblinking, fascinated eyes up the road where
he was expected to appear, walking freely, with a swing from the hip,
and humming one of the love-tunes of his country. When the boy was born,
he got elevated at the 'Coach and Horses,' essayed again a song and a
dance, and was again ejected. People expressed their commiseration for
a woman married to that Jack-in-the-box. He didn't care. There was a
man now (he told me boastfully) to whom he could sing and talk in the
language of his country, and show how to dance by-and-by.

"But I don't know. To me he appeared to have grown less springy of step,
heavier in body, less keen of eye. Imagination, no doubt; but it seems
to me now as if the net of fate had been drawn closer round him already.

"One day I met him on the footpath over the Talfourd Hill. He told me
that 'women were funny.' I had heard already of domestic differences.
People were saying that Amy Foster was beginning to find out what