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 to transact at Whinbury. Have you brought your exercise-book, child?”

“Yes. What time will you return, Robert?”

“I generally return at seven. Do you wish me to be at home earlier?”

“Try rather to be back by six. It is not absolutely dark at six now; but by seven daylight is quite gone.”

“And what danger is to be apprehended, Caroline, when daylight is gone? What peril do you conceive comes as the companion of darkness, for me?”

“I am not sure that I can define my fears; but we all have a certain anxiety at present about our friends. My uncle calls these times dangerous: he says, too, that mill-owners are unpopular.”

“And I one of the most unpopular? Is not that the fact? You are reluctant to speak out plainly, but at heart you think me liable to Pearson’s fate, who was shot at—not, indeed, from behind a hedge, but in his own house, through his staircase-window, as he was going to bed.”

“Anne Pearson showed me the bullet in the chamber-door,” remarked Caroline, gravely, as she folded her mantle, and arranged it and her muff on a side-table. “You know,” she continued, “there is a hedge all the way along the road from here to Whinbury, and there are the Fieldhead plantations to pass; but you will be back by six—or before?”

“Certainly he will,” affirmed Hortense. “And now, my child, prepare your lessons for repetition, VOL. I.