210 The Real Charlotte. 



deal faster than he had come down. Christopher pulled up 

 again on the top of the hill. He was higher now than the 

 corn, and, looking across its multitudinous, rustHng surface, 

 he saw the figure that some errant impulse had made him 

 come back to see. Francie's head was turned towards 

 Lambert, and she was evidently talking to him. Christopher's 

 eyes followed the pair till they were out of sight, and then 

 he again turned his horse, and went home to Bruff. 



CHAPTER XXX. 



One fine morning towards the end of August, Julia Duffy 

 was sitting on a broken chair in her kitchen, with her hands 

 in her lap, and her bloodshot eyes fixed on vacancy. She 

 was so quiet that a party of ducks, which had hung uncer- 

 tainly about the open door for some time, filed slowly in, 

 and began to explore an empty pot or two with their long, 

 dirty bills. The ducks knew well that Miss Duffy, though 

 satisfied to accord the freedom of the kitchen to the hens 

 and turkeys, had drawn the line at them and their cousins 

 the geese, and they adventured themselves within the for- 

 bidden limits with the utmost caution, and with many side 

 glances from their blinking, beady eyes at the motionless 

 figure in the chair. They had made their way to a plate of 

 potato skins and greasy cabbage on the floor by the table, 

 and, forgetful of prudence, were clattering their bills on the 

 delf as they gobbled, when an arm was stretched out above 

 their heads, and they fled in cumbrous consternation. 



The arm, however, was not stretched out in menace; 

 Julia Duff"y had merely extended it to take a paper from the 

 table, and having done so, she looked at its contents in en- 

 tire obliviousness of the ducks and their maraudings. Her 

 misfortunes were converging. It was not a week since she 

 had heard of the proclaimed insolvency of the man who had 

 taken the grazing of Gurthnamuckla, and it was not half an 

 hour since she had been struck by this last arrow of out- 

 rageous fortune, the letter threatening to process her for the 

 long arrears of rent that she had felt lengthening hopelessly 

 with every sunrise and sunset. She looked round the dreary 

 kitchen that had about it all the added desolation of past 



