"Early one morning, just as the sun was rising,
I heard a maid sing in the valley below:
'O don't deceive me! O never leave me
How could you use a poor maiden so?'"

A gruff voice from the, doorway broke harshly in upon a measure.

"Yes! yes! Well! well! Tunin' up a larrady, ain't ye?"

Dorcas knew who it was, without turning round,--a dark, squat woman,
broad all over; broad in the hips, the waist, the face, and stamped
with the race-mark of high cheekbones. Her thick, straight black hair
was cut "tin-basin style;" she wore men's boots, and her petticoats
were nearly up to her knees.

"Good morning, Nancy!" called Dorcas, blithely, wringing out her
dishcloth. "Come right in, and sit down."

Nance Pete (in other words, Nancy the wife of Pete, whose surname was
unknown) clumped into the room, and took a chair by the hearth. She
drew forth a short black pipe, looked into it discontentedly, and then
sat putting her thumb in and out of the bowl.

"You 'ain't got a mite o' terbacker about ye? Hey what?" she asked.

Dorcas had many a time been shocked at the same demand. This morning,
something humorous about it struck her, and she laughed.

"You know I haven't, Nancy Pete! Did you mend that hole in your skirt,