But there was never any sign of such in intention on the part of Will. On

the contrary, he had the inn set on a better footing, and hired a couple

of servants to assist him in carrying it on; and there he settled down, a

kind, talkative, inscrutable young man, six feet three in his stockings,

with an iron constitution and a friendly voice. He soon began to take

rank in the district as a bit of an oddity: it was not much to be

wondered at from the first, for he was always full of notions, and kept

calling the plainest common-sense in question; but what most raised the

report upon him was the odd circumstance of his courtship with the

parson's Marjory.

The parson's Marjory was a lass about nineteen, when Will would be about

thirty; well enough looking, and much better educated than any other girl

in that part of the country, as became her parentage. She held her head

very high, and had already refused several offers of marriage with a

grand air, which had got her hard names among the neighbours. For all

that she was a good girl, and one that would have made any man well

contented.

Will had never seen much of her; for although the church and parsonage

were only two miles from his own door, he was never known to go there but

on Sundays. It chanced, however, that the parsonage fell into disrepair,

and had to be dismantled; and the parson and his daughter took lodgings

for a month or so, on very much reduced terms, at Will's inn. Now, what

with the inn, and the mill, and the old miller's savings, our friend was

a man of substance; and besides that, he had a name for good temper and

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