/All's Well that Ends Well/, Act iv. Sc. 3.

SOME four miles distant from one of our northern manufacturing towns, in
the year 18--, was a wide and desolate common; a more dreary spot it is
impossible to conceive--the herbage grew up in sickly patches from the
midst of a black and stony soil. Not a tree was to be seen in the whole
of the comfortless expanse. Nature herself had seemed to desert the
solitude, as if scared by the ceaseless din of the neighbouring forges;
and even Art, which presses all things into service, had disdained to
cull use or beauty from these unpromising demesnes. There was something
weird and primeval in the aspect of the place; especially when in the
long nights of winter you beheld the distant fires and lights which give
to the vicinity of certain manufactories so preternatural an appearance,
streaming red and wild over the waste. So abandoned by man appeared the
spot, that you found it difficult to imagine that it was only from human
fires that its bleak and barren desolation was illumined. For miles
along the moor you detected no vestige of any habitation; but as you
approached the verge nearest to the town, you could just perceive at a
little distance from the main road, by which the common was intersected,
a small, solitary, and miserable hovel.

Within this lonely abode, at the time in which my story opens, were
seated two persons. The one was a man of about fifty years of age, and
in a squalid and wretched garb, which was yet relieved by an affectation
of ill-assorted finery. A silk handkerchief, which boasted the ornament
of a large brooch of false stones, was twisted jauntily round a muscular
but meagre throat; his tattered breeches were also decorated by buckles,
one of pinchbeck, and one of steel. His frame was lean, but broad and
sinewy, indicative of considerable strength. His countenance was
prematurely marked by deep furrows, and his grizzled hair waved over a