"What?"

"Drink, drink, drink!" cried the hag fiercely; "there's nothing like
drink for the poor, for thin we fancy oursels what we wish, and," sinking
her voice into a whisper, "I thinks thin that I have my foot on the
billies of the rich folks, and my hands twisted about their intrails, and
I hear them shriek, and--thin I'm happy!"

"Go home!" said Aram, turning away, "and open the Book of life with other
thoughts."

The little party proceeded, and, looking back, Lester saw the old woman
gaze after them, till a turn in the winding valley hid her from his
sight.

"That is a strange person, Aram; scarcely a favourable specimen of the
happy English peasant;" said Lester, smiling.

"Yet they say," added Madeline, "that she was not always the same
perverse and hateful creature she is now."

"Ay," said Aram, "and what then is her history?"

"Why," replied Madeline, slightly blushing to find herself made the
narrator of a story, "some forty years ago this woman, so gaunt and
hideous now, was the beauty of the village. She married an Irish soldier
whose regiment passed through Grassdale, and was heard of no more till
about ten years back, when she returned to her native place, the
discontented, envious, altered being you now see her."