p eyes
looking straight into his face, perturbed him strangely, and, reddening,
he remembered the quarrel in the hay-field and the tale of Crosby Shaws.

After this, the poultry became a link between them--a link which he
regarded in all seriousness, blindly unconscious that there was aught
else to bring them together, only feeling himself in awe of her, because
of her schooling, her townish manners, her ladylike mode of dress. And
soon, he came to take a sturdy, secret pride in her friendly familiarity
towards him. Several times a week he would meet her in the lane, and
they would loiter a moment together; she would admire his dogs, though
he assured her earnestly that they were but sorry curs; and once,
laughing at his staidness, she nick-named him 'Mr. Churchwarden'.

That the girl was not liked in the valley he suspected, curtly
attributing her unpopularity to the women's senseless jealousy. Of
gossip concerning her he heard no further hint; but instinctively, and
partly from that rugged, natural reserve of his, shrank from mentioning
her name, even incidentally, to his mother.

Now, on Sunday evenings, he often strolled up to the vicarage, each time
quitting his mother with the same awkward affectation of casualness;
and, on his return, becoming vaguely conscious of how she refrained from
any comment on his absence, and appeared oddly oblivious of the
existence of parson Blencarn's niece.

She had always been a sour-tongued woman; but, as the days shortened
with the approach of the long winter months, she seemed to him to grow
more fretful than ever; at times it was almost as if she bore him some
smouldering, sullen resentment. He was of stubborn fibre, however,
toughened by long habit of a bleak, unruly climate; he revolved the
matter in his mind deliberately, and when, at last, after much plodding
thought, it dawned upon him that she resented his acquaintance with Rosa
Blencarn, he accepted the solution with an unflinching phlegm, and
merely shifted his attitude towards the girl, calculating each day the
likelihood of his meeting her, and making, in her presence, persistent
efforts to break down, once for all, the barrier of his own timidity. He
was a man not to be clumsily driven, still less, so he prided himself, a
man to be craftily led.

It was close upon Christmas time before the crisis came. His mother was
just home from Penrith market. The spring-cart stood in the yard, the
old grey horse was steaming