Page:The Knife.pdf/4

118 through her slight fingers; with a gentle smile and a kind word for all those passers-by whom she knew, and a deep blush and sudden attention to her work for all whom she knew not. Harriet was not a native of our part of the country; her parents’ death had thrown her on the kindness of an uncle and aunt, who, having no child of their own, were happy to adopt her. Some little roughness in that course which is said never to run smooth—very true love—would seem to be the worst history that could be connected with the pretty peasant. But not so: her arrival in our county was attended by one of those terrible incidents which make humanity shudder at itself, and which are awful in proportion to their rareness. It is taking nature in the worst possible point of view, to think that custom reconciles even to crime. It was a sad morning when Harriet Lynn left her native village: she rose long before the appointed time. When at the stile by the beech-tree, she was to be taken up by John Dodd the carrier, who often gave a neighbour a lift to the next town. This stile was at the entrance of the churchyard—a sorrowful resting-place to one whose nearest and dearest were yet scarce cold in their tomb. Ever and anon did she enter and seek the far corner, where, beneath the shadow of an old yew-tree, was a grave: it held two tenants—they were her father and her mother, and she looked now on their place of rest for the last time. There