garden.

"For," said he to himself, "I mayn't be there next time there's a scythe
across the path, and who knows but what some day it may be the well in
real airnest; Dan Barnett may leave the lid off, or uncover the
soft-water tank, and the poor chap be drowned 'fore he knows it."

But when he went out he found his lodger looking so happy and contented,
tying up the loose shoots of the monthly rose which ran over the
cottage, that he held his tongue.

"It arn't my business," he argued, and he went off to meet an old crony
or two in the village.

"Don't let any one run away with the house while I'm gone, Mr John,"
said old Hannah, a few minutes later. "I'm going down to the shop, and
I shan't be very long."

Grange nodded pleasantly, and went on with his work.

That night Mary Ellis sat at her open window, sad and thoughtful,
inhaling the cool, soft breeze which came through the trees, laden with
woodland scents. The south-eastern sky was faintly aglow, lit up by the
heralds of the rising moon, and save the barking of a dog up at the
kennels, all was still.

She was thinking very deeply of her position, and of Daniel Barnett's
manner towards her the last time they met. It was plain enough that her
father favoured the head-gardener's visits, and in her misery her
thoughts turned to John Grange, the tears falling softly the while. All
at once she started away from the window, for, plainly heard, a low,
deep sigh came from the dark shadow of the trees across the road.

Daniel Barnett? John Grange? There so late? Who could it be?

Her heart said John Grange, for the wish was father to the thought.

But she heard nothing more for a few minutes, and then in a whisper,
hardly above the breath, the words--

"Good-bye--for ever, perhaps--good-bye!"

Then came the hurrying sound of steps on the dewy grass at the side of
the road, and the speaker was gone, leaving Mary leaning out of the
window, excited and trembling violently, while her heart beat in the
stillness of the night as if it were the echo of the hurried pace
rapidly dying away.

"It could not be--it could not be," she sighed at last, as she left the
window to prepare for bed. "And yet he loves me so dearly. But why
should he say that?"

She stopped in the middle of the room, and the words seemed to repeat
themselves--

"Good-bye--for ever, perhaps--good-bye!"

The tears fell fast as she felt that it was so like John Grange in his
manly, ho