Book Excerpt: ...All is still and sombre. At this hour the simple traffic of the thinly-peopled country is over, and nothing can be more solitary.From this jungle, nevertheless, through which the mists of evening are already creeping, she sees a gigantic man approaching her.In that poor and primitive country robbery is a crime unknown. She, therefore, has no fears for her pound of tea, and pint of gin, and sixteen shillings in silver which she is bringing home in her pocket. But there is something that would have frighted another woman about this man.He is gaunt, sombre, bony, dirty, and dressed in a black suit which a beggar would hardly care to pick out of the dust.This ill-looking man nodded to her as he stepped on the road."I don't know you," she said.He nodded again."I never sid ye neyawheere," she exclaimed sternly."Fine evening, Mother Carke," he says, and holds his snuff-box toward her.She widened the distance between them by a step or so, and said again sternly and pale,"I hev nowt to say to thee, whoe'er thou beest.""You know Laura Silver Bell?""That's a byneyam; the lass's neyam is Laura Lew," she answered, looking straight before her."One name's as good as...