‘Why, sir, I believe I can,’ said Mr. Archer.

And the exchange was just effected when Nance re-entered the apartment.  The blood shot into her face.

‘What’s to do here?’ she asked rudely.

‘Nothing, my dearie,’ said old Jonathan, with a touch of whine.

‘What’s to do?’ she said again.

‘Your uncle was but changing me a piece of gold,’ returned Mr. Archer.

‘Let me see what he hath given you, Mr. Archer,’ replied the girl.  ‘I had a bad piece, and I fear it is mixed up among the good.’

‘Well, well,’ replied Mr. Archer, smiling, ’I must take the merchant’s risk of it.  The money is now mixed.’

‘I know my piece,’ quoth Nance.  ’Come, let me see your silver, Mr. Archer.  If I have to get it by a theft I’ll see that money,’ she cried.

’Nay, child, if you put as much passion to be honest as the world to steal, I must give way, though I betray myself,’ said Mr. Archer.  ‘There it is as I received it.’

Nance quickly found the bad half-crown.

‘Give him another,’ she said, looking Jonathan in the face; and when that had been done, she walked over to the chimney and flung the guilty piece into the reddest of the fire.  Its base constituents began immediately to run; even as she watched it the disc crumbled, and the lineaments of the King became confused.  Jonathan, who had followed close behind, beheld these changes from over her shoulder, and his face darkened sorely.

‘Now,’ said she, ’come back to table, and to-day it is I that shall say grace, as I used to do in the old times, day about with Dick’; and covering her eyes with one hand, ‘O Lord,’ said she with deep emotion, ’make us thankful; and, O Lord, deliver us from evil!  For the love of the poor souls that watch for us in heaven, O deliver us from evil.’

CHAPTER VII—­THE BLEACHING-GREEN

The year moved on to March; and March, though it blew bitter keen from the North Sea, yet blinked kindly between whiles on the river dell.  The mire dried up in the closest covert; life ran in the bare branches, and the air of the afternoon would be suddenly sweet with the fragrance of new grass.

Above and below the castle the river crooked like the letter ‘S.’  The lower loop was to the left, and embraced the high and steep projection which was crowned by the ruins; the upper loop enclosed a lawny promontory, fringed by thorn and willow.  It was easy to reach it from the castle side, for the river ran in this part very quietly among innumerable boulders and over dam-like walls of rock.  The place was all enclosed, the wind a stranger, the turf smooth and solid; so it was chosen by Nance to be her bleaching-green.

One day she brought a bucketful of linen, and had but begun to wring and lay them out when Mr. Archer stepped from the thicket on the far side, drew very deliberately near, and sat down in silence on the grass.  Nance looked up to greet him with a smile, but finding her smile was not returned, she fell into embarrassment and stuck the more busily to her employment.  Man or woman, the whole world looks well at any work to which they are accustomed; but the girl was ashamed of what she did.  She was ashamed, besides, of the sun-bonnet that so well became her, and ashamed of her bare arms, which were her greatest beauty.