but not
boisterous, as you might have supposed it would be. But that sort of
laugh had not before come from his lips, since the day on which his love
for Jessie Wiles had made him at war with himself and the world.

The sun was setting when from the brow of a hill they beheld the spires
of Luscombe, imbedded amid the level meadows that stretched below,
watered by the same stream that had wound along their more rural
pathway, but which now expanded into stately width, and needed, to span
it, a mighty bridge fit for the convenience of civilized traffic. The
town seemed near, but it was full two miles off by road.

"There is a short cut across the fields beyond that stile, which leads
straight to my uncle's house," said Tom; "and I dare say, sir, that you
will be glad to escape the dirty suburb by which the road passes before
we get into the town."

"A good thought, Tom. It is very odd that fine towns always are
approached by dirty suburbs; a covert symbolical satire, perhaps, on the
ways to success in fine towns. Avarice or ambition go through very mean
little streets before they gain the place which they jostle the crowd to
win,--in the Townhall or on 'Change. Happy the man who, like you, Tom,
finds that there is a shorter and a cleaner and a pleasanter way to goal
or to resting-place than that through the dirty suburbs!"

They met but few passengers on their path through the fields,--a
respectable, staid, elderly couple, who had the air of a Dissenting
minister and his wife; a girl of fourteen leading a little boy seven
years younger by the hand; a pair of lovers, evidently lovers at
least to the eye of Tom Bowles; for, on regarding them as they passed
unheeding him, he winced, and his face changed. Even after they had
passed, Kenelm saw on the face that pain lingered there: the lips were
tightly compressed, and their corners gloomily drawn down.

Just at this moment a dog rushed towards them with a short quick
bark,--a Pomeranian dog with pointed nose and pricked ears. It hushed
its bark as it neared Kenelm, sniffed his trousers, and wagged its tail.

"By the sacred Nine," cried Kenelm, "thou art the dog with the tin tray!
where is thy master?"

The dog seemed to understand the question, for it turned its head
significantly; and Kenelm saw, seated under a lime-tree, at a good
distance from the path, a man, with book in hand, evidently employed in
sketching.

"Come this way," he said to Tom: "I recognize an acq