as dreadful misery, Dick. And
then I shut my eyes and fell to picturing you looking at some other
woman, very pretty and nice, but with no affection or truth in her at
all, and then imagined you saying to yourself, 'Ah, she's as good as
Fancy, for Fancy told me a story, and was a flirt, and cared for herself
more than me, so now I'll have this one for my sweetheart.' O, you
won't, will you, Dick, for I do love you so!"

It is scarcely necessary to add that Dick renounced his freedom there and
then, and kissed her ten times over, and promised that no pretty woman of
the kind alluded to should ever engross his thoughts; in short, that
though he had been vexed with her, all such vexation was past, and that
henceforth and for ever it was simply Fancy or death for him. And then
they set about proceeding homewards, very slowly on account of Fancy's
weariness, she leaning upon his shoulder, and in addition receiving
support from his arm round her waist; though she had sufficiently
recovered from her desperate condition to sing to him, 'Why are you
wandering here, I pray?' during the latter part of their walk. Nor is it
necessary to describe in detail how the bag of nuts was quite forgotten
until three days later, when it was found among the brambles and restored
empty to Mrs. Dewy, her initials being marked thereon in red cotton; and
how she puzzled herself till her head ached upon the question of how on
earth her meal-bag could have got into Cuckoo-Lane.

CHAPTER II: HONEY-TAKING, AND AFTERWARDS

Saturday evening saw Dick Dewy journeying on foot to Yalbury Wood,
according to the arrangement with Fancy.

The landscape being concave, at the going down of the sun everything
suddenly assumed a uniform robe of shade. The evening advanced from
sunset to dusk long before Dick's arrival, and his progress during the
latter portion of his walk through the trees was indicated by the flutter
of terrified birds that had been roosting over the path. And in crossing
the glades, masses of hot dry air, that had been formed on the hills
during the day, greeted his cheeks alternately with clouds of damp night
air from the valleys. He reached the keeper-steward's house, where the
grass-plot and the garden in front appeared light and pale against the
unbroken darkness of the grove from which he had emerged, and paused at
the garden gate.

He had scarcely been there a minute when he beheld a sort of procession
advancing from the