Vol.1 f.079 recto (Chapter 6 to 7)

furtherance of these precautions, barked like a lusty house-dog.
"In league with that ill-looking figure that might have fallen from a gibbet -- he listening and hiding here -- Barnaby first upon the spot last night -- can she who has always borne so fair a name be guilty of such crimes in secret!' said the locksmith, musing. " Heaven forgive me if I am wrong, and send me just thoughts; but she is poor, the temptation may be great, and we daily hear of things as strange. -- Ay, bark away, my friend. If there's any wickedness going on, that raven's in it, I'll be sworn.'

[1Chapter 7]1
MRS VARDEN was a lady of what is commonly called an uncertain temper -- a phrase which being interpreted signifies a temper tolerably certain to make everybody more or less uncomfortable. Thus it generally happened, that when other people were memy, Mrs Varden was dull; and that when other people were dull, Mrs Varden was disposed to be amazingly cheerful. Indeed the worthy housewife was of such a capricious nature, that she not only attained a higher pitch of genius than Macbeth, in respect of her ability to be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, loyal and neutral in an instant, but would sometimes ring the changes backwards and forwards on all possible moods and flights in one short quarter of an hour; performing, as it were, a hind of triple bob major on the peal of instruments in the female belfry, with a skilfulness and rapidity of execution that astonished all who heard her.
It had been observed in this good lady (who did not want for personal attractions, being plump and buxom to look at, though like her fair daughter, somewhat short in stature) that this uncertainty of disposition strengthened and increased with her temporal prosperity; and divers wise men and matrons, on friendly terms with the locksmith and his family, even went so far as to assert, that a tumble down some half-dozen rounds in the world's ladder -- such as the breaking of the bank in which her husband kept his