hand. Write to me, lass: I love thee still, I do love thee.

"DICK ORRY."




II

THE BOOK-IN-HAND INN,
MABLETHORPE, LINCOLNSHIRE.
May-Day, 1749.

"DEAR COUSIN DICK,--I think I have not been so glad in many years as when
I got your letter last Guy Fawkes Day. I was coming from the church where
the parson preached on plots and treasons, and obedience to the King,
when I saw the old postman coming down the road. I made quickly to him, I
know not why, for I had not thought to hear from you, and before I
reached him he held up his hand, showing me the stout packet which
brought me news of you. I hurried with it to the inn, and went straight
to my room and sat down by the window, where I used to watch for your
coming with the fishing fleet, down the sea from the Dogger Bank. I was
only a girl, a young girl, then, and the Dogger Bank was, to my mind, as
far off as that place you call York Factory, in Hudson's Bay, is to me
now. And yet I did not know how very far it was until our schoolmaster
showed me on a globe how few days' sail it is to the Dogger Bank, and how
many to York Factory.

"But I will tell you of my reading of your letter, and of what I thought.
But first I must go back a little. When you went away that wild, dark