the town, and I shall expect you."

The miller's man only replied by a defiant nod, which possibly meant that he would come, but had some appearance of expressing only a sarcastic wish that the Cheap Jack might see him on the occasion alluded to.

In obedience to a yell from its master, the white horse now started forward, and it is not too much to say that the journey to town was not made more pleasant for the poor beast by the fact that the Cheap Jack had a good deal of long-suppressed fury to vent upon somebody.

It was perhaps well for the bones of the white horse that, just as they entered the town, the Cheap Jack brushed against a woman on the narrow foot-path, who having turned to remonstrate in no very civil terms, suddenly checked herself, and said in a low voice, "Juggling Jack!"

The dwarf started, and looked at the woman with a puzzled air.

She was a middle-aged woman, in the earlier half of middle age; she was shabbily dressed, and had a face that would not have been ill- looking, but that the upper lip was long and cleft, and the lower one unusually large. As the Cheap Jack still stared in silence, she burst into a noisy laugh, saying, "More know Jack the Fool than Jack the Fool knows." But, even as she spoke, a gleam of recognition suddenly spread over the hunchback's face, and, putting out his hand, he said, "Sal! YOU HERE, my dear?"

"The air of London don't agree with me just now," was the reply; "and how are you, Jack?"

"The country air's just beginning to disagree with me, my dear," said the hunchback; "but I'm glad to see you, Sal. Come in here, my dear, and let's have a talk, and a little refreshment."

The place of refreshment to which the dwarf alluded was another public-house, the White Horse by name. There was no need to bid the Cheap Jack's white horse to pause here; he stopped of himself at every public-house; nineteen times out of twenty to the great convenience of his master, for which he got no thanks; the twentieth time the hunchback did not want to stop, and he was lavish of abuse of the beast's stupidity in coming to a standstill.

The white horse drooped his soft white nose and weary neck for a long, long time under the effigy of his namesake swinging overhead, and when the Cheap Jack did come out, he seemed so preoccupied that the tired beast got home with fewer blows than usual.

He unloaded his cart mechanically, as if in a dream; but when he touched the pictures, they seemed to awaken a fresh train of thought. He stamped one of his little feet spitefully on the ground, and, with a pretty close imitation of George's dialect, said bitterly, "Gearge bean't such a vool as a looks!" adding, after a pause, "I'd do a deal to pay HIM off!"

As he turned into the house, he said thoughtfully, "Sal's precious sharp; she allus was. And a fine woman, too, is Sal!"

Not long after the incidents just related, it happened that business called Mrs. Lake to the neighboring town. She seldom went out, but a well-to-do aunt was sick, and wished to see her; and the miller gave his consent to her going.

She met the milk-cart at the corner of the road, and so was driven to the town, and she took Jan with her.

He had begged hard to go, and was intensely amused by all he saw. The young Lakes were so thoroughly in the habit of taking every thing, whether commonplace or curious, in the same phlegmatic fashion, that Jan's pleasure was a new pleasure to his foster- mother, and they enjoyed themselves greatly.

As they were making their way towards the inn where they were to pick up a neighbor, in whose cart they were to be driven home, their progress was hindered by a crowd, which had collected near one of the churches.

Mrs. Lake was one of those people who lead colorless lives, and are without mental resources, to whom a calamity is almost delightful, from the stimulus it gives to the imagination, and the relief it affords to the monotony of existence.

"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" she cried, peering through the crowd: "I wonder what it is. 'Tis likely 'tis a man in a fit now, I shouldn't wonder, or a cart upset, and every soul killed, as it might be ourselves going home this very evening. Dear, dear! 'tis a venturesome thing to leave home, too!"

"'Ere they be! 'ere they be!" roared a wave of the crowd, composed of boys, breaking on Mrs. Lake and Jan at this point.

"'Tis the body, sure as death!" murmured the windmiller's wife; but, as she spoke, the street boys set up a lusty cheer, and Jan, who had escaped to explore on his own account, came running back, crying, -

"'Tis the Cheap Jack, mammy! and he's been getting married."

If any thing could have rivalled the interest of a sudden death for Mrs. Lake, it must have been such a wedding as this. She hurried to the front, and was just in time to catch sight of the happy couple as they passed down the street, escorted by a crowd of congratulating boys.

"Well done, Cheap John!" roared one. "You've chose a beauty, you have," cried another. "She's 'arf a 'ead taller, anyway," added a third. "Many happy returns of the day, Jack!" yelled a fourth.

Jan was charmed, and again and again he drew Mrs. Lake's attention to the fact that it really WAS the Cheap Jack.

But the windmiller's wife was staring at the bride. Not merely because the bride is commonly considered the central figure of a wedding-party, but because her face seemed familiar to Mrs. Lake, and she could not remember where she had seen her. Though she could remember nothing, the association seemed to be one of pain. In vain she beat her brains. Memory was an almost uncultivated quality with her, and, like the rest of her intellectual powers, had a nervous, skittish way of deserting her in need, as if from timidity.

Mrs. Lake could sometimes remember things when she got into bed, but on this occasion her pillow did not assist her; and the windmiller snubbed her for making "such a caddle" about a woman's face she might have seen anywhere or nowhere, for that matter; so she got no help from him.

And it was not till after the Cheap Jack and his wife had left the neighborhood, that one night (she was in bed) it suddenly "came to her," as she said, that the dwarf's bride was the woman who had brought Jan to the mill, on the night of the great storm.

CHAPTER XIV.

SUBLUNARY ART.--JAN GOES TO SCHOOL.--DAME DATCHETT AT HOME.--JAN'S FIRST SCHOOL SCRAPE.--JAN DEFENDS HIMSELF.

Even the hero of a tale cannot always be heroic, nor of romantic or poetic tastes.

The wonderful beauty of the night sky and the moon had been fully felt by the artist-nature of the child Jan; but about this time he took to the study of a totally different subject,--pigs.

It was the force of circumstances which led Jan to "make pigs" on his slate so constantly, instead of nobler subjects; and it dated from the time when his foster-mother began to send him with the other children to school at Dame Datchett's.

Dame Datchett's cottage was the last house on one side of the village main street. It was low, thatched, creeper-covered, and had only one floor, and two rooms,--the outer room where the Dame kept her school, and the inner one where she slept. Dame Datchett's scholars were very young, and it is to be hoped that the chief objects of their parents in paying for their schooling were to insure their being kept safely out of the way for a certain portion of each day, and the saving of wear and tear to clothes and shoes. It is to be hoped so, because this much of discipline was to some extent accomplished. As to learning, Dame Datchett had little enough herself, and was quite unable to impart even that, except to a very industrious and intelligent pupil.

Her school appurtenances were few and simple. From one of them arose Jan's first scrape at school. It was a long, narrow blackboard, on which the alphabet had once been painted white, though the letters were now so faded that the Dame could no longer distinguish them, even in spectacles.

The scrape came about thus.

As he stood at the bottom of the little class which gathered in a semicircle around the Dame's chair, his young eyes could see the faded letters quite clearly, though the Dame's could not.

"Say th' alphabet, childern!" cried Dame Datchett; and as the class shouted the names of the letters after her, she made a show of pointing to each with a long "sallywithy" wand cut from one of the willows in the water-meadows below. She ran the sallywithy along the board at what she esteemed a judicious rate, to keep pace with the shouted alphabet, but, as she could not see the letters, her tongue and her wand were not in accord. Little did the wide- mouthed, white-headed youngsters of the village heed this, but it troubled Jan's eyes; and when--in consequence of her rubbing her nose with her disengaged hand--the sallywithy slipped to Q as the Dame cried F, Jan brought the lore he had gained from Abel to bear upon her inaccuracy.

"'Tis a Q, not a F," he said, boldly and aloud.

A titter ran through the class, and the biggest and stupidest boy found the joke so overwhelming that he stretched his mouth from ear to ear, and doubled himself up with laughter, till it looked as if his corduroy-breeched knee were a turnip, and he about to munch it.

The Dame dropped her sallywithy and began to feel under her chair.

"Which be the young varment as said a F was a Q?" she rather unfairly inquired.