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While he was sending for a cart to take her onward to Stickleford Hipcroft anxiously inquired how it had all happened; and then the assembly explained that a fiddler formerly known in the locality had lately revisited his old haunts, and had taken upon himself without invitation to play that evening at the inn. Ned demanded the fiddler's name, and they said Ollamoor.
He could make any child in the parish, who was at all sensitive to music, burst into tears in a few minutes by simply fiddling one of the old dance-tunes he almost entirely affected country jigs, reels, and 'Favourite Quick Steps' of the last century some mutilated remains of which even now reappear as nameless phantoms in new quadrilles and gallops, where they are recognized only by the curious, or by such old-fashioned and far-between people as have been thrown with men like Wat Ollamoor in their early life.
The pedestrian was Mop Ollamoor, as the girl well knew; but his business that way was not to visit her; he sought another woman whom he spoke of as his Intended, and who lived at Moreford, two miles farther on. On one, and only one, occasion did it happen that Car'line could not control her utterance; it was when her sister alone chanced to be present. 'Oh oh oh ! she cried.
First in prominence among these three came Wat Ollamoor if that were his real name whom the seniors in our party had known well. He was a woman's man, they said, supremely so externally little else. To men be was not attractive; perhaps a little repulsive at times.
Mop Ollamoor, I reckon! said Hipcroft, gazing palely at them from the distance of the yard or two to which he had withdrawn with a start. Car'line gasped. 'But he's been gone away for years! she supplicated. 'And I never had a young man before! And I was so onlucky to be catched the first time, though some of the girls down there go on like anything! Ned remained in silence, pondering.
After that day, whenever there was to be in the neighbourhood a dance to which she could get an invitation, and where Mop Ollamoor was to be the musician, Car'line contrived to be present, though it sometimes involved a walk of several miles; for he did not play so often in Stickleford as elsewhere.
Four years ago, she said with the greatest delicacy of which she was capable, she had been so foolish as to refuse him. Her wilful wrong-headedness had since been a grief to her many times, and of late particularly. As for Mr. Ollamoor, he had been absent almost as long as Ned she did not know where.
'Ah! exclaimed Ned, looking round him. 'Where is he, and where where's my little girl? Ollamoor had disappeared, and so had the child. Hipcroft was in ordinary a quiet and tractable fellow, but a determination which was to be feared settled in his face now. 'Blast him! he cried. 'I'll beat his skull in for'n, if I swing for it to-morrow!
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