y earth and scatter the congregated dewdrops. "Alas!" thought Dick
Naseby, "how can any other day come so distastefully to me?" He still
wanted his experience of the morrow.

CHAPTER VII

THE ELOPEMENT

It was probably on the stroke of ten, and Dick had been half asleep for
some time against the bank, when Esther came up the road carrying a
bundle. Some kind of instinct, or perhaps the distant light footfalls,
recalled him, while she was still a good way off, to the possession of
his faculties, and he half raised himself and blinked upon the world. It
took him some time to recollect his thoughts. He had awakened with a
certain blank and childish sense of pleasure, like a man who had
received a legacy overnight but this feeling gradually died away, and
was then suddenly and stunningly succeeded by a conviction of the truth.
The whole story of the past night sprang into his mind with every
detail, as by an exercise of the direct and speedy sense of sight, and
he arose from the ditch and, with rueful courage, went to meet his love.

She came up to him walking steady and fast, her face still pale, but to
all appearance perfectly composed; and she showed neither surprise,
relief, nor pleasure at finding her lover on the spot. Nor did she offer
him her hand.

"Here I am," said he.

"Yes," she replied; and then, without a pause or any change of voice, "I
want you to take me away," she added.

"Away?" he repeated. "How? Where?"

"To-day," she said. "I do not care where it is, but I want you to take
me away."

"For how long? I do not understand," gasped Dick.

"I shall never come back here any more," was all she answered.

Wild words uttered, as these were, with perfect quiet of manner,
exercise a double influence on the hearer's mind. Dick was confounded;
he recovered from astonishment only to fall into doubt and alarm. He
looked upon her frozen attitude, so discouraging for a lover to behold,
and recoiled from the thoughts which it suggested.

"To me?" he asked. "Are you coming to me, Esther?"

"I want you to take me away," she repeated, with weary impatience. "Take
me away--take me away from here."

The situation was not sufficiently defined. Dick asked himself with
concern whether she were altogether in her right wits. To take her away,
to marry her, to work off his hands for her support, Dick was content to
do all this; yet he required some show of love upon her part. He was not
one of those tough-