"No," replied the aunt. "He said nothing about that."

"Thou seem'st mighty taken with this chap, methinks," interrupted Hodge. "Do you know what his vocation is ?"

"I do," said Geraldine. "He told it me one day as I sat and watched beside him."

66

'Well, and what is it?"

"An actor at the Blackfriars Theatre, an author, too, writer of the plays he enacts in, and which have made such a stir in London. Nay, I have one here which I have read over and over again."

"Better read your Bible."

"I do read my Bible, as you know; and next to it, for beauty of words and pureness of sentiments, this play seems to me to rank above all other books I have perused. Such noble sayings are, I opine, seldom to be found in books, as are to be found in this man's plays."

"Geraldine, thou art a fool," said Hodge, taking up his hat, "and ought to know

better than so to speak. The man's a player, true enough, one of those dissolute, fustian dogs, who are nightly to be found in Old Chepe. There's a tavern there called the Boar's Head,' where they all meet o' nights. Go there and ask for one Shakspere, thee'lt soon hear tidings of the fellow's doings there, and the roaring blades be consorts with."

Well did Geraldine recognise the name of the tavern her cousin had named, for she had wit enough, though a female and so young, to fully appreciate the scenes pourtrayed there in one of the plays she had perused.

She looked at Hodge with a look of most supreme contempt, turned from him and re-entering the inner chamber, slammed the door, as if she would say, "I will not waste another word on such an ignorant, vulgar brute."

CHAPTER VIII.

GERALDINE MAYNARD, as our readers may possibly have surmised, was quite a character in her way; one of those gifted beings whose doings and whose apparently erratic style of carrying on and going on, would seem an enigma to the more staid and sober of the community at large.

She made some of the old hands stare when she took it into her head to surprise their weak minds; whilst with the more juvenile amongst the neighbourhood, she appeared a sort of petty queen. To look at her as she walked the green, was to admire her.

"Grace was indeed in all her steps,"

according to the trite saying, albeit her eye

had anything but "heaven" in it, if by chance one of her numerous admirers presumed to offend or to thwart her.

Amongst the village maidens, (although she was necessarily admired), she was not altogether a favourite, for whenever she so willed it, she could easily entame men's hearts to her worship. Like Perdita, she seemed "the prettiest low born lass that ever tripp'd the greensward."

Nothing she did or seem'd

But smack'd of something greater than herself."

But was she a low born lass? That was indeed a question; for there was a mystery about her parentage which none, not even her accredited aunt and uncle could quite fathom.

The Maynards had dwelt upon the spot of ground they inhabited, and been millers there from the old monkish days. The title deeds by which they held the land they occupied, was as old as Alfred's day. Real old English yeomen they had been time out of mind; never rising, never deteriorating; always the

same, always millers; constant to their trade, to their mill, and to their honest toil, as the old lichen-covered wheel, which daily revolved in the stream. Geraldine had been

consigned to their charge when a baby. Brought from Ireland, where the miller's only brother had been serving, and had gained high repute as a soldier. He had married during the terrible struggles of that country, and lost his wife, it was supposed, after the birth of this child. During the Hags wars,*

as

they were termed, the infant had been brought over when but two years of age, and consigned to her uncle's charge.

Many an effort had the Miller made to trace out some of the mother's relations, after accepting the charge. But all had been in vain; and thus the infant had grown up from year to year in that sweet locality, a petted, indulged, and truth to say, a somewhat wayward child.

To look at her dusky hair and flashing

* See "History of Ireland."