"Old Anna? 215 



had retired from the court and cabinet of Charles 

 the Second. The old castle lies just within the Dun- 

 combe Park gates, in the midst of the little primitive 

 market town of Helmsley ; but the wild music of the 

 cannon which was once levelled against it for six 

 weeks by the Ironsides under Fairfax, is exchanged 

 in these happier times for the caw of the rooks, 

 which sail solemnly in circles round its ramparts. 

 The only room left in it is used on rent days, and 

 few farmers on all that vast property, which stretches 

 away fifteen miles to Cleveland bank, and seventeen 

 to the East Moors, once passed through the lodge at 

 those levees, whether they loved shorthorns or whether 

 they did not, without exchanging a word with " Old 

 Anna." 



It is many years since she resigned office as head 

 cow- woman, and her Herd Book memory seemed to 

 have stopped short at that point. She had caught 

 no reflected glory from the Fifth Duke of Oxford 

 and Symphony, and professed, we grieve to say, quite 

 a fashionable unconsciousness of their very existence. 

 Her love was irretrievably lost some thirty years before 

 to a " Young Grazier," and her love had known no 

 change. As for Bates and Booth, she " might have 

 heard their names ;" but Mr. Colling and Mr. Wiley, 

 they were the men for her. Grazier would be by one 

 of Mr. Wiley's bulls, and he was always buying from 

 Mr. Colling. No wonder there was such a sympathetic 

 chord ! W 7 hat were modern breeders, and their Bates 

 grandeur, and Booth substance, and Fawsley neatness 

 to her ? Give her the cows of her buxom womanhood 

 " big roomy yansT Then, warming with her subject, 

 after this general sentiment, she ticked her ancient 

 favourites off on her fingers. " There would be Em- 

 peror" she said, " and Baron, and Baroness, all oot of 

 one coo Wildair ; THEM WERE just the shorthorns ! 

 I could tell my lord, when the gentlemen came, every 

 one of their yages for fifteen years back, and all aboot 



