name. I forbid the house to Riderhood, and I forbid the house to Gaffer.
I forbid both, equally. I find from Riderhood and you together, that
there are suspicions against both men, and I'm not going to take upon
myself to decide betwixt them. They are both tarred with a dirty brush,
and I can't have the Fellowships tarred with the same brush. That's all
I know.'

'Good-night, Miss!' said Lizzie Hexam, sorrowfully.

'Hah!--Good-night!' returned Miss Abbey with a shake of her head.

'Believe me, Miss Abbey, I am truly grateful all the same.'

'I can believe a good deal,' returned the stately Abbey, 'so I'll try to
believe that too, Lizzie.'

No supper did Miss Potterson take that night, and only half her usual
tumbler of hot Port Negus. And the female domestics--two robust sisters,
with staring black eyes, shining flat red faces, blunt noses, and strong
black curls, like dolls--interchanged the sentiment that Missis had had
her hair combed the wrong way by somebody. And the pot-boy afterwards
remarked, that he hadn't been 'so rattled to bed', since his late mother
had systematically accelerated his retirement to rest with a poker.

The chaining of the door behind her, as she went forth, disenchanted
Lizzie Hexam of that first relief she had felt. The night was black and
shrill, the river-side wilderness was melancholy, and there was a sound
of casting-out, in the rattling of the iron-links, and the grating of
the bolts and staples under Miss Abbey's hand. As she came beneath
the lowering sky, a sense of being involved in a murky shade of Murder