eyes, entreated him to make her his wife. He promised to do so, the
tramping schoolmaster; but early the next day he left the village, never
to return. Then there was bitter lamentation in the cottage of the
parish-clerk; and before the winter was gone, the poor man's daughter
brought into the world a little boy, whom she gave her own family name,
together with the prefixed one of the unworthy father. Such was the
origin of Parker Clare.

What sort of existence this poor son of a poor mother went through, is
easily told. Education he had none; of joys of childhood he knew nothing;
even his daily allowance of coarse food was insufficient. He thus grew
up, weak and in ill-health; but with a cheerful spirit nevertheless.
Parker Clare knew more songs than any boy in the village, and his stock
of ghost stories and fairy tales was quite inexhaustible. When grown into
manhood, and yet not feeling sufficiently strong for the harder labours
of the field, he took service as a shepherd, and was employed by his
masters to tend their flocks in the neighbourhood, chiefly in the plains
north of the village, known as Helpston Heath. In this way, he became
acquainted with the herdsman of the adjoining township of Castor, a man
named John Stimson, whose cattle was grazing right over the walls of
ancient Durobrivae. John Stimson's place was taken, now and then, by his
daughter Ann--an occurrence not unwelcome to Parker Clare; and while the
sheep were grazing on the borders of Helpo's Heath, and the cattle
seeking for sorrel and clover over the graves of Trajan's warriors, the
young shepherd and shepherdess talked sweet things to each other,
careless of flocks and herds, of English knights and Roman emperors. So
it came that one morning Ann told her father that she had promised to
marry Parker Clare. Old John Stimson thought it a bad match: 'when
poverty comes in at the door, love flies out of the window,' he said,
fortified by the wisdom of two score ten. But when was ever such wisdom