ily.

VI

The next morning the frost had set in. The sky was still clear and
glittering: the whitened fields sparkled in the chilly sunlight: here
and there, on high, distant peaks, gleamed dainty caps of snow. All
the week Anthony was to be busy at the fell-foot, wall-building against
the coming of the winter storms: the work was heavy, for he was
single-handed, and the stone had to be fetched from off the fell-side.
Two or three times a day he led his rickety, lumbering cart along the
lane that passed the vicarage gate, pausing on each journey to glance
furtively up at the windows. But he saw no sign of Rosa Blencarn; and,
indeed, he felt no longing to see her: he was grimly exultant over the
remembrance of his wooing of her, and over the knowledge that she was
his. There glowed within him a stolid pride in himself: he thought of
the others who had courted her, and the means by which he had won her
seemed to him a fine stroke of cleverness.

And so he refrained from any mention of the matter; relishing, as he
worked, all alone, the days through, the consciousness of his secret
triumph, and anticipating, with inward chucklings, the discomforted
cackle of his mother's female friends. He foresaw without misgiving, her
bitter opposition: he felt himself strong; and his heart warmed towards
the girl. And when, at intervals, the brusque realization that, after
all, he was to possess her swept over him, he gripped the stones, and
swung them almost fiercely into their places.

All around him the white, empty fields seemed slumbering breathlessly.
The stillness stiffened the leafless trees. The frosty air flicked his
blood: singing vigorously to himself he worked with a stubborn,
unflagging resolution, methodically postponing, till the length of the
wall should be completed, the announcement of his betrothal.

After his reticent, solitary fashion, he was very happy, reviewing his
future prospects, with a plain and steady assurance, and, as the
week-end approached, coming to ignore the irregularity of the whole
business: almost to assume, in the exaltation of his pride, that he had
won her honestly; and to discard, stolidly, all thought of Luke Stock,
of his relations with her, of the coming child that was to pass for his
own.

And there were moments too, when, as he sauntered homewards through the
dusk at the end of his day's work, his heart grew full to overflowing of
a rugged, superstitious gratitude towards God in