he had
coveted as a business stand. He estimated instinctively the difference
in the sort of bow the pretty Brown girls would be likely to give him if
he carried his own purpose through. The day seemed duller. He felt more
sorry for his brother than he had ever felt before. He looked about at
the rough fields, the rude log fences, at the road with its gross
unevennesses and side strips of untrimmed weeds. He looked at it all,
his man's eyes almost wistful as a girl's. Was it as hard in this new
crude condition of things to hew for oneself a new way through the
invisible barriers of the time-honoured judgments of men, as it would be
where road and field had been smoothed by the passing of generations?

He had this contrast between English and Canadian scenery vividly in his
mind, wondering what corresponding social differences, if any, could be
found to make his own particular problem of the hour more easy, and all
the fine speculations he had had when he came down from the cemetery had
resolved themselves into--whether, _after all_, it would be better to go
on being a butcher or not, when he came to the beginning of the Rexford
paling. He noticed how battered and dingy it was. The former owner had
had it painted at one time, but the paint was almost worn off. The front
fencing wanted new pales in many places, and the half acre's space of
grass between the verandah and the road was wholly unkempt. It certainly
did not look like the abode of a family of any pretensions. It formed,
indeed, such a contrast to any house he would have lived in, even had
painting and fencing to be done with his own hand, that he felt a sort
of wrath rising in him at Miss Rexford's father and brother, that they
should suffer her to live in such a place.

He had not come well in front before he observed that the women of the
family were grouped at work on the green under a tree near the far end
of the house. A moment more, and he saw the lady of the midnight walk
coming towards him over the grass. He never doubted that it was she,
although he had not seen her before by daylight. She had purposely
avoided him on the Sunday; he had felt it natural she should do so. Now
when he saw her coming--evidently coming on purpose to waylay and speak
to him, the excitement he felt was quite unaccountable, even to himself;
not that he tried to account for it--he only knew that she was coming,
that his heart seemed to beat against his throat, that she had com