when they were
gone. People who had heard of his roving fancies supposed he would
hasten to sell the property, and go down the river to push his fortunes.
But there was never any sign of such in intention on the part of Will. On
the contrary, he had the inn set on a better footing, and hired a couple
of servants to assist him in carrying it on; and there he settled down, a
kind, talkative, inscrutable young man, six feet three in his stockings,
with an iron constitution and a friendly voice. He soon began to take
rank in the district as a bit of an oddity: it was not much to be
wondered at from the first, for he was always full of notions, and kept
calling the plainest common-sense in question; but what most raised the
report upon him was the odd circumstance of his courtship with the
parson's Marjory.

The parson's Marjory was a lass about nineteen, when Will would be about
thirty; well enough looking, and much better educated than any other girl
in that part of the country, as became her parentage. She held her head
very high, and had already refused several offers of marriage with a
grand air, which had got her hard names among the neighbours. For all
that she was a good girl, and one that would have made any man well
contented.

Will had never seen much of her; for although the church and parsonage
were only two miles from his own door, he was never known to go there but
on Sundays. It chanced, however, that the parsonage fell into disrepair,
and had to be dismantled; and the parson and his daughter took lodgings
for a month or so, on very much reduced terms, at Will's inn. Now, what
with the inn, and the mill, and the old miller's savings, our friend was
a man of substance; and besides that, he had a name for good temper and
shrewdness, which make a capital portion in marriage; and so it was
currently gossiped, among their ill-wishers, that the parson and his
daughter had not chosen their temporary lodging with their eyes shut.
Will was about the last man in the world to be cajoled or frightened into
marriage. You had only to look into his eyes, limpid and still like
pools of water, and yet with a sort of clear light that seemed to come
from within, and you would understand at once that here was one who knew
his own mind, and would stand to it immovably. Marjory herself was no
weakling by her looks, with strong, steady eyes and a resolute and quiet
bearing. It might be a question whether she was not Will