advantages which singled us out as differing in a marked way from
other children at our time of life. We possessed nothing of the
sort. I had been called a clever boy at school; but there were
thousands of other boys, at thousands of other schools, who
headed their classes and won their prizes, like me. Personally
speaking, I was in no way remarkable--except for being, in the
ordinary phrase, "tall for my age." On her side, Mary displayed
no striking attractions. She was a fragile child, with mild gray
eyes and a pale complexion; singularly undemonstrative,
singularly shy and silent, except when she was alone with me.
Such beauty as she had, in those early days, lay in a certain
artless purity and tenderness of expression, and in the charming
reddish-brown color of her hair, varying quaintly and prettily in
different lights. To all outward appearance two perfectly
commonplace children, we were mysteriously united by some kindred
association of the spirit in her and the spirit in me, which not
only defied discovery by our young selves, but which lay too deep
for investigation by far older and far wiser heads than ours.

You will naturally wonder whether anything was done by our elders
to check our precocious attachment, while it was still an
innocent love union between a boy and a girl.

Nothing was done by my father, for the simple reason that he was
away from home.

He was a man of a restless and speculative turn of mind.
Inheriting his estate burdened with debt, his grand ambition was
to increase his small available income by his own exertions; to
set up an establishment in London; and to climb to political
distinction by the ladder of Parliament. An old friend, who had
emigrated to America, had proposed to him a speculation in
agriculture, in one of the Western States, which was to make both
their fortunes. My father's eccentric fancy was struck by the
idea. For more than a year past he had been away from us in the
United States; and all we knew of him (instructed by his letters)
was, that he might be shortly expected to return to us in the
enviable character of one of the richest men in England.

As for my poor mother--the sweetest and softest-hearted of
women--to see me happy was all that she desired.

The quaint little love romance of the two children amused and
interested her. She jested with Mary's father about the coming
union between the two families, without one serious thought of
the future--without even a foreboding of what might happen when
my father returned. "Sufficient for the day is the evil (or the
good) thereof," had been my mother's motto all her life. She
agreed with the easy philosophy of the bailiff, already recorded
in these pages: "They're only children. There's no call, poor
things, to part them yet a while."

There was one member of the family, however, who took a sensible
and serious view of the matter.

My father's brother paid us a visit in our solitude; discovered
what was going on between Mary and me; and was, at first,
naturally enough, inclined to laugh at us. Closer investigation
altered his way of thinking. He became convinced that my mother
was acting like a fool; that the bailiff (a faithful servant, if
ever there was one yet) was cunningly advancing his own interests
by means of his daughter; and that I was a young idiot, who had
developed his native reserves of imbecility at an unusually early
period of life. Speaking to my mother under the influence of
these strong impressions, my uncle offered to take me back with
him to London, and keep me there until I had been brought to my
senses by association with his own children, and by careful
superintendence under his own roof.

My mother hesitated about accepting this proposal; she had the
advantage over my uncle of understanding my disposition. While
she was still doubting, while my uncle was still impatiently
waiting for her decision, I settled the question for my elders by
running away.

I left a letter to represent me in my absence; declaring that no
mortal power should part me from Mary, and promising to return
and ask my mother's pardon as soon as my uncle had left the
house. The strictest search was made for me without discovering a
trace of my place of refuge. My uncle departed for London,
predicting that I should live to be a disgrace to the family, and
announcing that he should transmit his opinion of me to my father
in America by the next mail.

The secret of the hiding-place in which I contrived to defy
discovery is soon told. I was hidden (without the bailiff's
knowledge) in the bedroom of the bailiff's mother. And did the
bailiff's mother know it? you will ask. To which I answer: the
bailiff's mother did it. And, what is more, gloried in doing
it--not, observe, as an act of hostility to my relatives, but
simply as a duty that lay on her conscience.

What sort of old woman, in the name of all that is wonderful, was
this? Let her appear, and speak for herself--the wild and weird
grandmother of gentle little Mary; the Sibyl of modern times,
known, far and wide, in our part of Suffolk, as Dame Dermody.

I see her again, as I write, sitting in her son's pretty cottage
parlor, hard by the window, so that the light fell over her
shoulder while she knitted or read. A little, lean, wiry old


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