n
cleaned and returned to him five minutes later, he followed the farmer
and his daughter into their dining-room.

There the meal was a hideous one to him despite his hunger and the good
and plentiful food. For seated at the family table, were several farm
hands, white overseers of the negro labourers, and they made stupid
jokes, shoving their elbows into one another and grinning idiotically
from Peachy to him. Their ugly thoughts were like palpable close
presences in the room, destroying all possible illusions for the boy,
and yet the girl herself seemed not to mind. Instead, she blushed and
bridled, sending challenging looks at Ambrose across the spring
freshness of his piled-up plate of new potatoes, jowl, and spring greens
each time he attempted putting his fork up to his mouth.

So that after a while, inch by inch, the boy felt himself being pushed
into a corner where he had meant to walk one day of his own accord. And
by the time dinner was over, not only had all desire passed from him,
but apparently all will power as well. For next he allowed Peachy to
lead him to an enclosed summer house. This summer house was some
distance away from the big place and so shut in by carefully trained
vines that it allowed no opportunity for distracting views or vistas
beyond. It was what one under some circumstances might have called, "a
chosen spot."

[Illustration: "The Village"]

Now there is no reasonable explanation of why Peachy Williams, the chief
heiress of "the Pennyrile," had so set her heart upon the possession of
Ambrose Thompson. Lovers were plentiful, and among them the rich owner
of the place adjoining her father's, and Ambrose had no fortune worth
mentioning, and, moreover, was distinctly homely; but perhaps Peachy was
drawn as many another woman has been before--by the lure of the unknown;
for never could she have any proper understanding of Ambrose Thompson's
temperament. Times were when he appeared more ardent than any of her
other suitors, and then his attention being distracted, both physically
and mentally he faded from sight. Now in contrast Peachy's own
disposition was direct and simple. At a distance from the Red Farm to
the village she recognized that her lover might be difficult to control,
but near at hand she believed him tractable, and in a measure this was
true, for Ambrose could always be managed by his friends up to a certain
point--only the trouble was that at this time of life Peachy Willia