Vol.1 f.018 recto

gentlemen, you'd have had some satisfaction, and wouldn't have wasted breath. Miss Haredale is Mr Geoffrey
Haredale's niece."
"Is her father alive?" [n?] said the man, carelessly.
" No,' rejoined the landlord, " he is not alive, and he is not dead --"
"Not dead!" cried the other [??nt??].
["at least" "nNot dead in a common way." said the landlord.
The man suffered a short pause to elapse, and then [???] asked abruptly

"What do you mean?"
"That," returned the landlord, a little brought down from his dignity by the stranger's surliness, "is a Maypole story, and has been any time these four-and-twenty years. That story is Solomon Daisy's story. It belongs to the house; and nobody but Solomon Daisy has ever told it under this roof, or ever shall -- that's more."
The man glanced at the parish-clerk, whose air of consciousness and importance plainly betokened him to be the person referred to, and, observing that he had taken his pipe from his lips, after a very long whiff to keep it alight, and was evidently about to tell his story without further solicitation, gathered his large coat about him, and shrinking further back was almost lost in the gloom of the spacious chimney-corner, except when the flame, struggling from under a great faggot, whose weight almost crushed it for the time, shot