ehaviour, doing now exactly what he was told,
never angry, never complaining, and that, Mrs. Bolitho thought, was
strange, because you could see in his eye that he had a will and a
temper of his own, did he like to exercise them. After all, he himself
was the merest boy, scarcely older than Jacob. She could, herself, see
that he must have been a fine enough lad when he had his health--the
breadth of his shoulders, the thick sturdiness of his shape, the
strength of his thighs and arms. Her husband had seen the boy stripped,
and had told her that he must have been a "lovely man." Drink and evil
women--ay, they'd brought him down as they'd brought many another--and
she thought of her Jacob in London with a catch at her heart. She
stopped in her cooking and prayed there and then, upon her kitchen
floor, that he might be kept safe from all harm.

Nearly every one in the village, of course, remembered Maggie, and they
could not see that she was "any changed." "Cut 'er 'air short--London
fashion" they supposed. They had liked her as a child and they liked
her now. She was more cheerful and friendly, they thought, then she
used to be.

Nevertheless all the village awaited, with deep interest, for what they
felt would be a very moving climax. The young man was "fey." God had
set His mark upon him, and nothing that any human being could do would
save him. In old days they would have tried to come near him and touch
him to snatch some virtue from the contact. They did not do that, but
they felt when they had spoken to him that they had received some merit
or advantage. The new parson came to call upon Martin and Maggie, but
he got very little from his visit.

"Poor fellow," he said to his wife on his return. "His days are
numbered, I fear."

To every one it was as though Martin and Maggie were enclosed in some
world of their own. No one could come near them, no one could tell of
what they were really thinking, of their hopes or fears, past or future.

"Only," as Mrs. Bolitho said to her husband, "one thing's certain, she
do love 'im with all her heart and soul--poor lamb."

When Martin and Maggie had been at the farm about a fort-night, there
came to St. Dreot's a travelling circus. This was a very small affair,
but it came every year, and provided considerable excitement for the
village population. There were also gipsies who came on the moor, and
telling the fortunes of any who had a spare sixpence with which to
cross the