and I thought what a bright, pretty face it was!"

"That's Mary Powlett and her uncle. You have heard me speak of her
as the girl who was so kind in nursing Bill."

"Indeed, Ned! I should scarcely have expected to find so quiet and
tidy looking a girl at Varley, still less to meet her with a male
relation in church."

"She lives at Varley, but she can hardly be called a Varley girl,"
Ned said. "Bill was telling me about her. Her uncle had her brought
up down here. She used to go back to sleep at night, but otherwise
all her time was spent here. It seems her mother never liked the
place, and married away from it, and when she and her husband died
and the child came back to live with her uncle he seemed to think
he would be best carrying out his dead sister's wishes by having her
brought up in a different way to the girls at Varley. He has lost
his wife now, and she keeps house for him, and Bill says all the
young men in Varley are mad about her, but she won't have anything
to say to them."

"She is right enough there," Captain Sankey said smilingly. "They
are mostly croppers, and rightly or wrongly--rightly, I am
afraid--they have the reputation of being the most drunken and
quarrelsome lot in Yorkshire. Do you know the story that is current
among the country people here about them?"

"No, father, what is it?"

"Well, they say that no cropper is in the place of punishment.