The woman then went on to describe the means by which she had got a sort of footing in this house; how she first discovered the back-door, and under what pretences she invited the servants to enter into a sort of concert with her for their mutual emolument, they bartering hare-skins, kitchen grease, cold meat, &c., for lace, tapes, thread, ballads, and other small matters.

“The thieves?” cried Salmon; but no one noticed him.

“There were only two servants in the house,” said the gipsy; “there might be others, but I saw them not, and one of those now stands here;” and she fixed her eagle eye on Rebecca; “the other is Jacob.”

“Jacob and Rebecca!” exclaimed Salmon; “it was my house, then, that you were robbing, and my servants whom you were tampering with.”

“Go on,” said Dymock to the vagrant, whose story then proceeded to this effect:—­

She had visited the offices of this house several times; when, coming one evening by appointment of the servants, with some view to bartering the master’s goods with her own wares, she found the family in terrible alarm, she had come as she said, just at the crisis in which a soul had parted, and it was the soul of that same old lady who had been playing with the infant on the grass-plot.

Rebecca was wailing and groaning in the kitchen, for she needed help to streak the corpse, and the family had lived so close and solitary, that she knew of no one at hand to whom to apply, and she feared that the dead would become stark and cold, before she could find help; Jacob was not within, he had gone to London, to fetch a Doctor of their own creed, and was not likely to be back for some time.

“And why? said I,” continued the vagrant, “why, said I, should I not do for this service as well as another? for many and many had been the corpse which I had streaked; so she accepted my offer, and took me up to the chamber of death, and I streaked the body, and a noble corpse it was.  The dame had been a comely one, as tall as that lady,” pointing to Dymock’s aunt, “and not unlike her.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Mrs. Margaret, smiling, “I understand it now;” but Dymock bade her be silent, and the vagrant went on.

“So,” said she, “when I had streaked the body, I said to Rebecca we must have a silver plate, for pewter will not answer the purpose.”

“What for?” said she.

“‘To fill with salt,’ I answered, ‘and set upon the breast.’

“So she fetched me a silver plate half filled with salt, and I laid it on the corpse; ‘and now,’ I said, ’we must have rue and marjoram, run down and get me some;’ and then I frightened her, poor fool as she was, by telling her that by the limpness of the hand of the corpse, I augured another death very soon in the house.”