The Mangle House

ast chapter took place, faced the old road, and was a low stone structure with a flag roof and four rooms. The lower storey was divided down the middle by a passage which went through from the front door to the back. There was a stone table near the front door, whilst the other opened into a carefully tended back garden. The room nearest to the fold corner was a herbalist's shop, which smelt strongly of aromatic simples, and the other was the mangling-room and house-place. As the herbalist had a great local reputation in a time and amongst a people much addicted to "natural" remedies, and the mangle was the only one in the village, the house was well known in the locality, and often, as the landlord of the "Dog and Gun" admitted, had more customers than his own comfortable place of resort; and this in spite of the notorious fact that the "quack doctor" and his daughter were self-contained and "standoffish" sort of folk, who looked down on even their best customers. That they were well-off when they left the g