ust be less than the man I took him for.

I'd about spent my hour and was turning back to the house half a mile
below when Jenny herself came along, well knowing where I was; and so I
wasted no words, but prepared to strike while the thought of her set
uppermost in my mind. She spoke first, however, and much surprised me.
'Twas her way of breaking into the matter did so, and she well knew that
what she had to tell would let the cat out of the bag.

"William," she said, "I couldn't bear for you to hear the thing what's
happened except from me, and I want for you to be merciful to all
concerned."

She was excited and her hair waving in the autumn wind so brown as the
falling leaves. Her eyes were wild also, and her mouth down-drawn, and a
good bit of misery looked out of her face.

"I'm known for a merciful man where mercy may be called for, my lovely
dear," I said to her. "Us'll walk up and down my path once more since
you've come. I've long known there was a lot on your mind and went so far
as to ask your father what it might be; but he only said 'twas your
conscience up against you leaving him."

"'Tis my conscience all right," she answered, "but not like that--a long
sight more crueller than that. Tom Bond has gone to see father this
afternoon and--oh, William, I wish I was dead!"

I kept my nerve, for that was the only hope in her present frame of mind.

"'Tis a very ill-convenient thing for my future wife to wish she was
dead," I told her; "and why for has Tom gone to see your father? Mr. Owlet
ain't the sort of man to find a gay young spark like Tom much to his
taste."

"You must listen," she said, "and God forgive me for saying what I'm going
to say, but I can't live a lie no more, William, and Tom can't live a lie
no more. He loves me and I love him. I thought I loved you, and do love
you most sure and true and never better than now; but I don't love you
like I love him."

Then she poured it all out--how they'd found their real selves in each
other and so on--and I couldn't make up my mind on the instant whether she
spoke true, or whether she only thought she did. Being a proud sort of
man, I very well knew that there'd be no great fuss and splutter on my
side in any case, nor yet no silly attempts to keep her if her heart was
gone; but she appeared so excited and so properly frantic and so torn in
half between what she felt for Tom Bond and what she felt for me, that I
perceived how I must go steady an