,
all was grave and secret except the stream which shouted louder than
before in proof of courage. She did not like the trees, but the
neighbourhood of Halkett's Farm had an attraction for her. Down there,
in the hollow, old Halkett was drinking himself to death, after a life
which had been sober in no respect. Mrs. Samson, the charwoman, now
exerting herself at Pinderwell House, and the wife of one of Halkett's
hands, had many tales of the old man's wickedness and many nodded hints
that the son was taking after him. The Halketts were all alike, she
said. They married young and their wives died early, leaving their men
to take comfort, or celebrate relief, in their own way.

"Ah, yes! They're a hearty, jolly lot," she often said, and smacked her
lips. She was proud and almost envious of the Halketts' exploits, for
her own husband was a meek man who never misused her and seldom drank.

Widely different as Mrs. Samson and Miriam believed themselves to be,
they had a common elementary pleasure in things of ill report, a savage
excitement in the presence of certain kinds of danger, and Miriam sat
half fearfully by the larch-wood and hoped something terrible would
happen. If there was a bad old man on the moor it was a pity that she
should not benefit by him, yet she dreaded his approach and would have
run from him, for he was ugly, with a pendulous nose and a small leering
eye. She decided to stay at a safe distance from the house and not to
venture among the larches: any primroses growing there should live
undisturbed, timid and pale, within earshot of old Halkett's ragings,
and Uncle Alfred must go without his flowers. Helen had said he would
not like them, but that was only because Helen did not like the thought
of Uncle Alfred. Helen did not want new things: she was content: she was
not wearied by the slow hours, the routine of the quiet house with its
stately, polished furniture, chosen long ago by Mr. Pinderwell, the
rumbling of cart-wheels on the road, and the homely sounds of John
working in the garden. She belonged, as she herself averred, to people
and to places.

"And I," Miriam called aloud, touching her breast--"I belong to nobody,
though everything belongs to me."

In that announcement she outcried the stream, and through the
comparative quietness that followed a hideous noise rumbled and shrieked
upwards from the hollow. Bestial, but humanly inarticulate, it filled
the air and ceased: there was the loud t