last
letter, and declaring again that this alone was sufficient justification
for any woman to put an end to an understanding with him. Her husband
must be a better scholar.

'He bore her rejection of him in silence, but his suffering was sharp--all
the sharper in being untold. She communicated with Jack no more; and as
his reason for going out into the world had been only to provide a home
worthy of her, he had no further object in planning such a home now that
she was lost to him. He therefore gave up the farming occupation by
which he had hoped to make himself a master-farmer, and left the spot to
return to his mother.

'As soon as he got back to Longpuddle he found that Harriet had already
looked wi' favour upon another lover. He was a young road-contractor,
and Jack could not but admit that his rival was both in manners and
scholarship much ahead of him. Indeed, a more sensible match for the
beauty who had been dropped into the village by fate could hardly have
been found than this man, who could offer her so much better a chance
than Jack could have done, with his uncertain future and narrow abilities
for grappling with the world. The fact was so clear to him that he could
hardly blame her.

'One day by accident Jack saw on a scrap of paper the handwriting of
Harriet's new beloved. It was flowing like a stream, well spelt, the
work of a man accustomed to the ink-bottle and the dictionary, of a man
already called in the parish a good scholar. And then it struck all of a
sudden into Jack's mind what a contrast the letters of this young man
must make to his own miserable old letters, and how ridiculous they must
make his lines appear. He groaned and wished he had never written to
her, and wondered if she had ever kept his poor performances. Possibly
she had kept them, for women are in the habit of doing that, he thought,
and whilst they were in her hands there was always a chance of his
honest, stupid love-assurances to her being joked over by Harriet with
her present lover, or by anybody who should accidentally uncover them.

'The nervous, moody young man could not bear the thought of it, and at
length decided to ask her to return them, as was proper when engagements
were broken off. He was some hours in framing, copying, and recopying
the short note in which he made his request, and having finished it he
sent it to her house. His messenger came back with the answer, by word
of mouth, that Miss Palm