my making a sign of assent, she rose, and, with fascinating grace and alacrity, raised the pitcher to my lips. While I drained long draughts of the pure stream, she held the heavy pitcher and looked at me with a smile.
As, according to the custom of the country, I thanked her by bidding God bless her, and was about to enter into conversation, a harsh voice broke in:
"The Holy Trinity protect us! Can it be Dinorah, who, on the open heath, sets up a liquor-shop for the townsfolk?"
I looked round, and saw a miller of the neighborhood, whom I knew by sight, sitting upon his sacks, which a strong horse carried without difficulty together with his master, and on his way apparently to one hamlet after another. Under other circumstances he would have been a welcome companion to me, for he knew the country and its inhabitants intimately, and, apart from his self-satisfied, levelling, liberal views, and the spirit of contradiction which he caught from his newspapers—apart, I say, from this, and an utter absence of all feeling for what was deepest, tenderest, and most earnest in the heart of the people, he was by no means a bad sort of man, nay, for every-day life, he might be called a cheerful and useful companion.
At this moment, however, his appearance, and the antagonism between him and such a creature
