The Leather Plater. 301 



fitted to stand against the troubles which pressed so heavily on him, 

 died. The poor girl for she was scarcely anything else was 

 thus thrown upon the wide world without a friend to assist her, 

 and almost penniless. She resolved once more to seek her father, 

 and endeavour to enlist his sympathies if not for herself, at least 

 on behalf of her infant daughter. She travelled down into York- 

 shire by the very coach which Harrison drove. 



Old Jack Radford, who had been a groom in her father's stables 

 for nearly twenty years, had left the service, and, marrying an old 

 female servant at the Hall, who had nursed Annie's mother in her 

 infancy, had taken the little roadside inn which he then kept. The 

 only faults that could be brought against Jack Radford were his 

 ugliness, his short crusty temper towards men (no man, however, 

 could be kinder with his horses, and many a vicious savage brute 

 which had been turned out of the breaker's hands as incurable, 

 succumbed to his gentle treatment), and his rude, uncultivated 

 manners, which even a five-and-twenty years' servitude and con- 

 nexion with gentlemen could not tone down. He had been brought 

 up in a racing-stable so there is little wonder that he could ride - } 

 and, when we add that he was a thorough-bred Yorkshire man, we 

 need hardly say that he was a consummate judge of a horse. He 

 was as good a groom as ever strapped a horse, as honest as the day, 

 and a trusty, faithful, and attached servant in his own rough way. 

 His public was just six miles from the Hall gates, and here the poor 

 girl alighted with her little daughter, one dark, cheerless November 

 evening. She had not the courage to go straight to her father's 

 door. It is needless to say that she was received as a daughter 

 both by Jack Radford and his wife, who had both known her from 

 her childhood. 



The next morning Jack took a letter from her up to the Hall. 

 He did not see the old father ; but in about half-an-hour he received 

 an answer, which he was commissioned to deliver to the poor girl. 

 He rode home with a light heart, for, from what he could gather 

 in the servants' hall, he was led to believe that the old man was 

 becoming more reconciled to his daughter. He delivered the letter 



