ut, but
the day broke cloudy and dripping, and when the little party assembled
at breakfast their humours appeared to have changed with the change of
weather. Nance had been brooding on the scene at the river-side,
applying it in various ways to her particular aspirations, and the
result, which was hardly to her mind, had taken the colour out of her
cheeks. Mr. Archer, too, was somewhat absent, his thoughts were of a
mingled strain; and even upon his usually impassive countenance there
were betrayed successive depths of depression and starts of exultation,
which the girl translated in terms of her own hopes and fears. But
Jonathan was the most altered: he was strangely silent, hardly passing a
word, and watched Mr. Archer with an eager and furtive eye. It seemed as
if the idea that had so long hovered before him had now taken a more
solid shape, and, while it still attracted, somewhat alarmed his
imagination.

At this rate, conversation languished into a silence which was only
broken by the gentle and ghostly noises of the rain on the stone roof
and about all that field of ruins; and they were all relieved when the
note of a man whistling and the sound of approaching footsteps in the
grassy court announced a visitor. It was the ostler from the "Green
Dragon" bringing a letter for Mr. Archer. Nance saw her hero's face
contract and then relax again at sight of it; and she thought that she
knew why, for the sprawling, gross black characters of the address were
easily distinguishable from the fine writing on the former letter that
had so much disturbed him. He opened it and began to read; while the
ostler sat down to table with a pot of ale, and proceeded to make
himself agreeable after his fashion.

"Fine doings down our way, Miss Nance," said he. "I haven't been abed
this blessed night."

Nance expressed a polite interest, but her eye was on Mr. Archer, who
was reading his letter with a face of such extreme indifference that she
was tempted to suspect him of assumption.

"Yes," continued the ostler, "not been the like of it this fifteen
years: the North Mail stopped at the three stones."

Jonathan's cup was at his lip, but at this moment he choked with a great
splutter; and Mr. Archer, as if startled by the noise, made so sudden a
movement that one corner of the sheet tore off and stayed between his
finger and thumb. It was some little time before the old man was
sufficiently recovered to beg the ostler to go on, an