e replied, the good woman got up to go. Much of
her apparel had slipped away from her in the fervours of revivalist
anecdote, and while she hunted for gloves and reticule--officiously
helped by the younger girls--Robert crossed over to Catherine.

'You lifted us on to your own high places!' he said, bending down to
her; 'I shall carry your story with me through the fells.'

She looked up, and as she met his warm moved look a little glow and
tremor crept into the face, destroying its exalted expression. He broke
the spell; she sank from the poet into the embarrassed woman.

'You must see my old man,' she said, with an effort; 'he is worth a
library of sermons. I must introduce him to you.'

He could think of nothing else to say just then, but could only stand
impatiently wishing for Mrs. Fleming's disappearance, that he might
somehow appropriate her eldest niece. But alas! when she went, Catherine
went out with her, and reappeared no more, though he waited some time.

He walked home in a whirl of feeling; on the way he stopped, and leaning
over a gate which led into one of the river-fields gave himself up to
the mounting tumult within. Gradually, from the half-articulate chaos of
hope and memory, there emerged the deliberate voice of his inmost
manhood.

'In her and her only is my heart's desire! She and she only if she will,
and God will, shall be my wife!'

He lifted his head and looked out on the dewy field, the evening beauty
of the hills, with a sense of immeasurable change--

'Tears
Were in his eyes, and in his ears
The murmur of a thousand years.'

He felt himself knit to his kind, to his race, as he had never felt
before. It was as though, after a long apprenticeship, he had sprung
suddenly into maturity--entered at last into the full human heritage.
But the very intensity and solemnity of his own feeling gave him a rare
clear-sightedness. He realised that he had no certainty of success,
scarcely even an entirely reasonable hope. But what of that? Were they
not together, alone, practically, in these blessed solitudes? Would they
not meet to-morrow, and next day, and the day after? Were not time and
opportunity all his own? How kind her looks are even now! Courage! And
through that maidenly kindness his own passion shall send the last,
transmuting glow.

CHAPTER VII

The following morning about noon, Rose, who had been coaxed and
persuaded by Catherine, muc