permitted anything of a more exciting nature
until after morning service), there are, I am
warranted in saying, dukes— I repeat the
expression, dukes— who have appeared to less
advantage.

Taffey was, in fact, a blacksmith. The science
of farriage (if there is no such word, there
ought to be) was held to have attained its
climax in the school of Taffey. Until nature
should remodel hoofs, art could do no more to
supply her deficiencies. His plates might be
worn till nothing remained between the
wearer's hoofs and the hard Welsh roads, but a
wafer bright as silver, bendable into a double
ring for your wife's little finger; yet they
were never lost nor loosened. It was an
often-quoted saying of the squire's (uttered, if you
please, in a moment of enthusiasm, but never
formally recanted), that if he— Theophilus
Hurbandine, of Llbwyddcoed, in the shire of Flint
— resided habitually in Grosvenor-square, he
would, nevertheless, send down every horse in
his stable to be shod, as usual, by Edward Taffey.

Taffey loved his business. Business returned
his affection. That shed of his was never
vacant for half an hour together.

"Bless the brutes! Wheer they comes
from I do' know— nather why they comes to
me so thick," would Taffey remark, sweeping
the moisture from his brow with the dingy
turban formed by his tucked-up sleeve. And
still the stamping of impatient hoofs and switching
of uneasy tails went on from morning
till night; the fire never ceasing its roar, the
little crowd of idlers round the half-door of the
forge never diminishing, until boys stood in
their fathers' places with their fingers, like those
fathers', in their mouths— their eyes carrying
on the wink at the sparkling fount of fire, into
another generation.

It will be readily believed that Taffey was a
man well-to-do. Blacksmiths, when not given to
drink, are almost always thriving men. So, I
have observed, are millers. And whereas, nine
times in ten, according to statistics about to be
taken, your miller has a lovely child with blue
eyes and a skin white as her father's
meal-sacks, so, in this instance, our blacksmith had
a blooming daughter, with a cheek as brown as,
though considerably smoother than, that of her
respected sire.

Katy was the prettiest girl, known of, from
Llbwyddcoed to Abertlhery. Her hair was of
the colour of the horse-chestnut fresh from his
rough green overcoat; and, with regard to the
blush with which, among many other pretty
things, she returned from market excursions,
on something that resembled a bale of bearskins
on castors, but was popularly believed to be a
pony within— as touching, I say, that blush, I
can only aver that, were I a woman, I would
rather wear that natural rose for six months
certain than be turned out, beautiful for ever,
from the hands of the most accomplished
dispenser of loveliness that ever compounded a
Bond-street wash.

Next to her Hebe face, and when you had
sufficiently admired her lithe supple figure, you
would probably find yourself attracted by Katy's
foot— not so much on account of the fascination
of a pair of bright steel buckles, once the
property of her grandmother, which it was her
whim to wear, as of the symmetry of the member
they adorned, and the light decisive tread,
displaying a grace no dancing-mistress could
have taught. Katy was graceful from her very
cradle. The honest folks about her admired
before they well knew why.

As she grew up, this peculiar grace— it was
almost dignity— of manner and movement
procured her the title of "my lady": invented, it
was believed, by her father himself; and by this
she was generally known, it being considered
merely anticipative of what was to follow.
Fairy godmothers have still adherents in Wales,
and it was an article of faith with a large portion
of Katy's friends, that the benignant influence
which had conferred such attractive gifts upon
"my lady" in infancy, would, in due course,
bring forward the expectant prince, or other
eminent person, destined to claim Katy for his
bride.

The pew tenanted by the family of Mr.
Taffey being situated just within the porch of
the little village church, its occupants were
usually among the first who issued forth. But
they were too well held and popular to be
suffered to escape thus easily. Overtaken and
surrounded, pleasant were the conversations
that ensued around a certain stile at which Mr.
Taffey's Sunday route diverged from the general
way, and led across the meadows towards a
little farm he rented from the squire, Mr.
Hurbandine aforesaid, and at which he always spent
the remainder of his day of rest.

Many were the greetings from the passers-by,
and none more cordial than from the squire
himself, who, walking between his handsome
haughty-looking sons, suspended a rather
animated conversation in which he was engaged
with the elder, in order to exchange a word of
kindness with his humble friend.

"Trot up to the place to-morrow, Taffey, if
you have half an hour to spare," he turned to
add, "and speak to me about Ten-Tree Meadow.
Never mind Hardham; you and I will settle
the matter between us."

Taffey bowed; but, though he was pleased
with the squire's affability, his countenance
was somehow overcast, as he gazed after the
retreating three.

The sons of Mr. Hurbandine, of Llbwyddcoed,
were thought to have inherited, with their
mother's patrician blood, something of her
patrician pride. She was a Vere-Vavasour. To
have been at once a Vere and a Vavasour might
well have turned an ordinary brain. Something
had affected the poor lady's; and, as one of
her fancies was that her veins were filled with
the brightest Prussian blue, it might be fairly
concluded that pride of ancestry was not devoid
of blame in the matter.

Lady Geraldine was now at rest with a
select and polished circle of her exalted line,
who enjoyed a mausoleum all to themselves,
in a picturesque corner of the ancestral domain,