WYLDER'S HAJVD. 259 if you be, I can't help it, for I must speak. I've heard it all — I heard you and Miss Radie speak on the night you first came to see her after your sickness; and I heard you speak again, by my room door, only a week before your marriage, when you thought I was asleep. So I've heard it all — and though I mayn't understand all the ins and and outs on't, I know it well in the main. Oh, Master Stanley, Master Stanley! How can you go on with it?" "Come, Tamar, what do you want of me?" What do you mean? What the d — is it all about?" "Oh ! well you know, Master Stanley, what it's about." "Well, there is something unpleasant, and I suppose you have heard a smattering of it in your muddled way; but it is quite plain you don't in the least understand it, when you fancy I can do anything to serve any one in the small- est degree connected with that disagreeable business — or that I am personally in the least to blame in it; and I can't conceive what business you had listening at the key- hole to your mistress and me, nor why I am wasting my time talking to an old woman about my affairs, which she can neither understand nor take part in" "Master Stanley, it won't do. I heard it — I could not help hearing. I little thought you had any such matter to speak —- and you spoke so sudden like, I could not help it. You were angry, and raised your voice. What could old Tamar do? I heard it all before I knew where I was." "I really think, Tamar, you've taken leave of your wits — you are quite in the clouds. Come, Tamar, tell me, once for all — only drop your voice a little, if you please—what the plague has got into your old head. Come, I say, what is it?" He stooped and leaned his ear to Tamar; and when