?" Her voice and her body
shook with self-sacrifice and love and when Miriam's head dropped to her
shoulder Helen was willing to give her all she had.

"I'm not crying," Miriam said, after an agitated pause. "I'm not
overcome. I'm only laughing so much that I can't make a sound! Zebedee!
Oh! No! That's very funny." She straightened herself. "Helen dear, did
you think you'd discovered my little secret, my maidenly little secret?
I only want Uncle Alfred to come and take me away. This is a dreadful
family to belong to, but there are humorous moments. It's almost worth
while. John, here's Helen suggesting that I'm in love with Zebedee!"

"Well, why not?" he asked, but he was hardly thinking of what he said.
"I've left Lily on guard in there. Notya has gone to sleep."

"But she can't have," Helen said.

"She has, my child."

"Are you sure she's not--are you sure she is asleep?"

"Like a baby."

"Then we shall have to make a noise and wake her. She would never
forgive us if she found out that we knew, so tell Lily to come out and
then we must all burst in."

CHAPTER XVII

Lily and John went down the track: Mildred Caniper climbed slowly, but
with dignity, up the stairs; Miriam was heard to bang her bedroom door
and Rupert and Helen were left together in the schoolroom.

"I can't get the tinker out of my head," she told him.

"I must have done it very well."

"Miriam didn't like it. She thought it silly."

"So it is."

"No, it's real, so real that he has been sitting in our hollow," she
complained.

"That won't do. Turn him out. He doesn't belong to our moor."

"No. I think I'll go for a walk and forget him."

"I should," he said, in his sympathetic way. "I won't go to bed till you
come back." He pulled his chair nearer to the lamp, opened a book and
contentedly heard Helen leave the house, for though he was fond of her
there were times when her forebodings and her conscience became
wearisome. Let the moor be her confessor tonight!

Helen dropped into the darkness like a swimmer taking deep water quietly
and at once she was immersed in happiness. She forgot her stepmother
sitting so stiffly on the sofa and for a little while she forgot that
the future which held her and Zebedee in its embrace held a solitary
Mildred Caniper less warmly. In the scented night, Helen allowed herself
to taste joy without misgiving.

She walked slowly because she was hemmed in by feelings which were
blissful and un