one."

"But you stop by the roadside even now."

"Yes. That one can do."

"You are two strong creatures and you draw each other," Penzance had
said. "Perhaps you drew each other across seas. Who knows?"

Coming to West Ways on a chance errand he had, as it were, found
her awaiting him on the threshold. On her part she had certainly not
anticipated seeing him there, but--when one rides far afield in the
sun there are roads towards which one turns as if answering a summoning
call, and as her horse had obeyed a certain touch of the rein at a
certain point her cheek had felt momentarily hot.

Until later, when the "picking" had fairly begun, the kilns would not be
at work; but there was some interest even now in going over the ground
for the first time.

"I have never been inside an oast house," she said; "Bolter is going to
show me his, and explain technicalities."

"May I come with you?" he asked.

There was a change in him. Something had lighted in his eyes since the
day before, when he had told her his story of Red Godwyn. She wondered
what it was. They went together over the place, escorted by Bolter. They
looked into the great circular ovens, on whose floors the hops would be
laid for drying, they mounted ladder-like steps to the upper room where,
when dried, the same hops would lie in soft, light piles, until pushed
with wooden shovels into the long "pokes" to be pressed and packed
into a solid marketable mass. Bolter was allowed to explain the
technicalities, but it was plain that Mount Dunstan was familiar with
all of them, and it was he who, with a sentence here and there, gave her
the colour of things.

"When it is being done there is nearly always outside a touch of the
sharp sweetness of early autumn," he said "The sun slanting through the
little window falls on the pale yellow heaps, and there is a pungent
scent of hops in the air which is rather intoxicating."

"I am coming later to see the entire process," she answered.

It was a mere matter of seeing common things together and exchanging
common speech concerning them, but each was so strongly conscious of
the other that no sentence could seem wholly impersonal. There are
times when the whole world is personal to a mood whose intensity seems a
reason for all things. Words are of small moment when the mere sound of
a voice makes an unreasonable joy.

"There was that touch of sharp autumn sweetness in the air yesterday
morning," she said. "And t